ICS Cybersecurity: Visibility, Protective Controls, Continuous Monitoring – Wash, Rinse, Repeat

As we have talked about in prior blogs, industrial cybersecurity is a journey. This is a journey that is never-ending, as control system technology advancements are adopting information technology (IT) and cloud-based solutions at a faster rate than ever before. At the same time, the threat landscape of malicious activity is constantly evolving. We now have malware like Industroyer that can communicate with industrial protocols and threats like Triton that are capable of targeting Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS).

What’s to be done in response to these threats? In other words…

What is your strategy?

Do you have an industrial cybersecurity strategy, or are you just rolling the dice?

It’s important to define what the overall goal should be for an organization’s industrial cybersecurity strategy. At the end of the day, the strategy needs to outline people, process and technology solutions that can help mitigate, lessen the impact of and/or help prevent industrial cybersecurity incidents, events which may affect one’s ability to view, monitor and control the industrial process.

As we defined a cyber event in one of my prior blogs earlier, these events can come from human error, equipment failure or malicious behavior.

How do you get started on this journey?

The following blogs from other Belden brands have succinctly addressed the following question “how do I get started?” Have a look: ICS Security: 3 Ways to Get Started and Getting Started on ICS and SCADA Security.

Both of the above understand cybersecurity risk assessments as a good first step. While this is a great recommendation, there are things you can proactively do in parallel to get started on this journey.

Control what you can control

While it may seem that securing an industrial control system is a daunting task, there are some fundamentals that you can (Read more...)