"Remote access to control systems poses a huge danger," said Phyllis Schneck, McAfee's vice president for threat intelligence.
And the reason I did is because there had been a lot of threat intelligence from overseas.
Employers value not only the level of threat intelligence gained in the armed forces, but also the organisational and logistical experience.
The suggestions were for "things most everyone should be doing on an everyday basis," said Dan McWhorter, the managing director of threat intelligence at Mandiant Corporation.
The bureau said that "given the potential imminence of the threat," it contacted the officials immediately, even as the reliability of the threat intelligence was being investigated.
Ryan Olson, threat intelligence director at Palo Alto, said the "KeRanger" malware, which appeared on Friday 4 March, was the first functioning ransomware attacking Apple's Mac computers.
"We give vendors ample time to react, and then we try to responsibly release them," said Jim Melnick, the director of threat intelligence at iDefense.
"They didn't just take down one kid and a Web site," said Dave Marcus, director of advanced research and threat intelligence at McAfee, a major provider of computer security software.
A State Department spokesman said that the closings were not the result of new threat intelligence, but "merely an indication of our commitment to exercise caution and take appropriate steps to protect our employees and visitors to our facilities".
The proposal sensibly tries to protect privacy by recommending that unneeded personal information is stripped out of threat intelligence before it is shared and demanding strict controls on the use of what remains.
Ryan Olson, director of threat intelligence at Palo Alto Networks, said the malware had limited functionality and his firm had uncovered no examples of data theft or other harm as a result of the attack.
