“I would show up to work every single day and learn of two, three, four more states that had been actively targeted by the same actors,” said Ferrante, a former FBI agent who was director of cyber incident response for President Barack Obama’s National Security Council at the time.
He says that and more in a recent 60 Minutes report, “When Russian Hackers Targeted the U.S. Election Infrastructure.” The segment highlights concerns that have come to define Ferrante’s career as a public official, private consultant, and adjunct professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at Fordham.
Ferrante is a senior managing director and the global head of cybersecurity practice at FTI Consulting and teaches in Fordham’s M.S. in cybersecurity program. He played a central role in establishing the International Conference on Cyber Security, co-organized by Fordham and the FBI and held every 18 months at the Lincoln Center campus.
In the 60 Minutes interview, Ferrante said hackers who targeted states’ systems “absolutely” could have caused havoc when Election Day came around. Asked by correspondent Bill Whitaker why they didn’t, he replied, “I don’t know if we’ll ever know.”
Watch the 60 Minutes segment here.
