Copper wire thefts from highway street lights have decreased over the past few months following a December plea for help, an Indiana Department of Transportation official said Thursday. Crews are crediting counter-theft measures put in place with the Indiana State Police.

Federal energy regulators plan to impose new security rules on electric utilities to make sure they protect major substations and other facilities critical to the operation of the electric grid.

“Cybersecurity is a matter of homeland security,” said new Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, adding “one of the key goals of advancing this nation’s cybersecurity is building trust and relationships between the government and the private sector.”

In early January, residents of Charleston, W. Va., found that their tap water had a licorice smell and a strong aftertaste, and it resulted in a number of people reporting a variety of ailments.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) warns that the April 16, 2014, attack on a California power plant proves that terrorists could take down whole stretches of the U.S. power grid. Schumer said Sunday that power companies currently have the right to veto proposed security requirements, but he is calling for the federal energy regulator and the Department of Homeland Security to draft tougher security standards overseen by Congress that would end the industry’s veto rights.

An April attack on Silicon Valley’s phone lines and power grid was terrorism, according to former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman Jon Wellinghoff said Wednesday. The FBI has released multiple statements that is has found no indications to support this claim, but Wellinghoff says he reached his conclusion after consulting with Defense Department experts about the attack, which involved snipping AT&T fiber-optic lines to knock out phone and 911 service, and firing shots into a PG&E substation, causing outages, an Associated Press article reports.

The reality of living without computers, mobile phones and entertainment systems, and managing a transport system thrown into chaos by an absence of traffic lights, trains and subways, may become increasingly common, according to a new academic study.

Bipartisan legislation to fortify U.S. cybersecurity has been approved by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies, and the measure – the National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2013 – will heat to the full Homeland Security Committee for consideration.

The Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report reveals that threats designed to take advantage of users’ trust in systems, applications and personal networks have reached startling levels.

The University of Nevada, Reno is establishing a Cyber Security Center.