DALLAS — A cyberattack over the weekend shut down the Colonial Pipeline, one of the major pipelines in the United States. It runs from Houston up to New Jersey and New York, providing gasoline for much of the southeastern states in the country.
There are a lot of concerns about the impact this will have on gas prices if the outage is prolonged.
Bruce Bullock, Director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University, said the state of Texas is in good shape.
"It shouldn't impact us in the North Texas area as long as people don't panic," said Bullock. "Our supply of gasoline here and our supply of other products, jet fuel and so forth should be more than adequate."
He urges Texans to not rush to gas stations to fill up their tanks. And Bullock reminds drivers that it is normal for gas prices to increase this time of year through Memorial and Independence Day.
"Texas, in general, should be just fine. It's really where you start getting over into Georgia, Tennessee, and those areas," Bullock said.
Chris Bronk, Associate Professor at the University of Houston, is an expert in cybersecurity. He agrees that day-to-day, people in Texas won't feel the impact of this cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline.
However, it's important for this incident to remind people how important cybersecurity is.
"Ransomware steals all your data, basically locks it up. So you need a copy of all that data so you can build back immediately. It's all about resiliency," said Bronk.
It comes down to how well-prepared a company is with its backup plan. From a technical level, he said the ransomware attack on the pipeline is not sophisticated, and similar hacks happen all the time.
"The next time this kind of thing hits a hospital or a bank or some other entity, that could be a really big problem," Bronk said.