exida explains Blog

Last week I attended the ISA Water/Wastewater and Automatic Controls Symposium in Bethesda, Maryland. The conference was attended by equipment manufacturers and municipalities, but system integrators composed the largest group. The technical sessions mainly discussed new opportunities for implementing the industrial internet of things (IoT) and cybersecurity…

Read More...

I don’t know whether you’ve noticed recently, but the number of cybersecurity alerts issued by CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) seems to be increasing at an alarming rate.  The latest alert I’ve seen now relates to GPS tracking systems for children.  A device which is supposed to keep…

Read More...

Preparedness is defined as being in a state of readiness (Webster, 2022).  This can take many different forms but when it comes to cybersecurity, a big part is knowing what threats lie in wait within the cyber landscape.  It’s difficult to prepare against threats or vulnerabilities you don’t know exist.  Being able…

Read More...

Personnel responsible for protecting organizational assets within Operations Technology (OT) groups would seem to have the same mission as those responsible for protecting organizational assets within Information Technology (IT) groups, and be tightly aligned. Spending any amount of time with Industrial Control System (ICS) clients, however, shows that is…

Read More...

An April 2019 report from the Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) makes the point that even though software ‘runs the world’, software security is an afterthought across virtually all industries. 

The report states that this lack of software security is actually a National Threat given that this…

Read More...

Cyberattacks have become the new norm for industrial control systems. A recent study found that 54% (more than half) of companies surveyed had experienced a cyber-attack on their Industrial control system within the last two years[1]. 

The need for well-trained, competent individuals to address cybersecurity for industrial control systems…

Read More...

One of the things that automation companies are beginning to do is to plan for cyber hygiene. More and more companies are implementing automation specific awareness training for their employees. They conduct periodic exercises which like sending phishing emails to see who if you respond. They might leave USB…

Read More...

As the number, scale, and connectivity of industrial automation systems continues to grow, it becomes increasingly crucial to fundamentally understand, evaluate, and manage cybersecurity risks. The objective of an effective cybersecurity management program should be to maintain the industrial automation system consistent with corporate risk criteria. 

Ownership for industrial…

Read More...

The exposure of industrial facilities to cybersecurity threats has never been higher. An analysis performed by IBM security found that the number of attacks on SCADA systems increased 636% from 2012 to 2014, with 675,816 cybersecurity incidents in January 2014 [1]. Finding an effective method for evaluating the current…

Read More...

Have you noticed that over the last several years, cybersecurity seems to be “trending?” 

Companies of all sizes are starting to learn how to prevent, or at least minimize, these attacks. They hire third-party experts and attend trainings to learn more about the human and system weaknesses that are…

Read More...

The thought of tackling a threat model (TM) might not be the most appetizing to some people.   Doing a quick Internet search, someone could get stuck under a mountain of acronyms and terms.  I mean, what is a CVSS anyway?  And then there are the diagrams, attack trees and feedback loops that…

Read More...

Today’s owner operators and lease operators of industrial production facilities frequently employ service providers for projects and upgrades, as well as operations and maintenance. These contractors often travel to many sites, carry their own copies of source code and files, and use multiple PCs with multiple engineering tools for…

Read More...

exida would like to welcome our new director of cybersecurity services Dave Gunter.  Dave will be taking us through a multi part blog series based on general cybersecurity evolving into how it pertains to your industrial work environment and what you should do to protect your company…

Read More...

That’s a great question.

What is a Cyber sensitive position?

A cyber sensitive position is a subset of a job position description that can be graded as Ultra, High, Medium or Low sensitivity with respect to cybersecurity assets and associated potential consequences that may impact an operating company.

What…

Read More...

After careful planning and development of your system, the last thing you want to worry about is the credibility of your certification. Although it may seem like a given for your certification to be well accepted by your customers, it is never a bad idea to dig a little…

Read More...

The travel and group meeting restrictions from COVID-19 have allowed me to catch up on some reading about viruses; not the type that get transmitted to humans. This article is about the Stuxnet virus and what I learned from the book “Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of…

Read More...

The IEC 62443 series of cybersecurity standards include over ten documents covering various subjects. Buying a full set is a bit expensive, but for me the real cost is the time needed to read and understand them. So I often ask one of the experts at exida…

Read More...

During an IACS cybersecurity risk analysis, each zone of a network is given a target security level. The levels are one to four, with one being the least amount of protection and four giving the most protection. For each zone we ask, “How much cybersecurity protection do we…

Read More...

Industrial Automation Control Systems (IACS) Cybersecurity based on IEC 62443 was created to be compatible with agile development methodology. The standard deliberately talks about processes and not phases, such as those in the waterfall model. The processes defined can be met simultaneously and are, most likely, already being followed…

Read More...

When we were doing safety system designs in the 1980s, there was no Windows, there was no TCP/IP, there was no in Ethernet. We had to write our own protocols to transmit data to our I/O and our controllers.

Fault-finding was always a challenge . What we ended up…

Read More...