Protection of industrial infrastructure from cyber attacks

Home / Protection of industrial infrastructure from cyber attacks

Computer vulnerabilities in manufacture and critical infrastructure cost people’s health and lives

The frequency and complexity of attacks on SCADA, ICS, and OT are increasing every year, and the trends are sad. Unlike the security of systems in other industries, in a nation’s manufacturing and critical infrastructure, the potential cost of overlooked vulnerabilities is not only information leaks or business interruptions, but also environmental issues, and even people’s health and lives.

With many years of experience in the development, implementation, and security of SCADA, industrial IT and OT, we offer the best service on the market. Discuss your concerns and problems with us.

SCADA and ОТ audit Assess the security of your critical infrastructure. We have international certificates for industrial information security. We will help you with a deep SCADA and OT audit, as well as with industrial automation.

Security of SCADA and industrial IT/OT Ensure the security of your SCADA and OT systems by implementing security audit recommendations. We design, develop, integrate and implement security controls, and also support them and train your staff.

Industrial security training Ensure the security of your SCADA and OT systems not only with security measures and systems, but also by the secure execution of processes and operations. Order a comprehensive security training programme for your personnel.

Security compliance audit Gain market and competitive advantage by bringing your organization up to official compliance with international security standards such as ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, TISAX, GDPR, SOC 2 and more.

Incident investigation and forensics Find out who penetrated your system, and when, how, and why they did it. We carry out detailed research including media analysis and apply cutting-edge techniques such as RAM, registry, shadow volume analysis, timeline analysis, and more.

Server hardening Strengthen your IT infrastructure by reducing potential attack paths. We find, tweak or remove unnecessary or dangerous features to close hidden loopholes before an adversary takes advantage of them.

ISO 27001 implementation and certification Master the world's most widespread structural basis for building modern Information Security Management Systems (ISMS), namely the international standard ISO 27001. Obtain an official certificate of ISO 27001 compliance.

Virtualization Take advantage of cloud services and on-premises virtualization to improve the performance of your infrastructure (servers, workstations, applications, and networks), as well as reduce its maintenance costs.

Security experts as a service and Virtual CISO Add cybersecurity expertise to your projects by hiring our certified Remote Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and/or information security professionals.

Managed threat detection and response Order advanced threat detection, immediate incident response, and continuous security monitoring of IT assets of all kinds: network devices, servers, workstations, and individual applications.

Awareness programmes Manage social engineering defence, gain practical security skills, improve security culture, and develop a security-first mindset. Order the Security Awareness Program.

Security Trends

Growing attack surface

The number of automated systems is growing. More and more organizations and individuals have direct or remote access to ICS. All this gives cybercriminals more options to plan and execute attacks.

Growing interest of cybercriminals and intelligence agencies

The declining profitability of old types of attacks is forcing cybercriminals to seek new targets, including among industrial organizations. In parallel, the intelligence services of many countries are actively involved in the development of espionage techniques and cyber-terrorist attacks on industrial facilities.

Underestimating the overall level of threats

Information security problems in industrial companies are relatively new, so the existing threats are underestimated. This negatively affects the decision-making and danger assessment by management.

Wrong understanding of threats and inadequate protection

Most professional industrial cybersecurity incident reports are difficult to understand and lack important details about OT systems. This situation increases the vulnerability of systems to real attacks.

Threats and vulnerabilities

There are only two reasons for any security incident: threats (external factors) and vulnerabilities (internal factors). Threats are difficult to influence. It is always better to focus on vulnerabilities, internal problems that may seem small, but when combined with threats, lead to large damage.

Some examples of vulnerabilities:

Violation of network segmentation

Unauthorized connections (temporary, debug, emergency, etc.) of industrial Ethernet networks to other factory or office networks expose industrial networks to the risk of external infections and hacker attacks.

Wireless devices

Unreported or unauthorized connection of WiFi/GPRS/3G modems or routers to industrial switches breaks the security perimeter and creates uncontrolled points of penetration and leakage.

Improper change management

Engineers, electricians or mechanics, who have physical access to industrial computers, may perform inconsistent, incompetent, or unrecorded modifications of industrial software, which may lead to violations and incidents that are difficult to track and investigate.

Fieldbus problems

PLCs use Profibus, Modbus, CAN, Profinet, or other buses to communicate with remote I/O and slave devices. These buses can often be used for PLC programming. In this way, an unauthorized user with access to the fieldbus could copy and/or modify the PLC program.

Lax access mode

Excessive or disordered access by maintenance personnel or subcontractors to SCADA machines or PLCs leads to various risks of compromising the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of industrial systems.

Industry 4.0 / IIoT

Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) approaches require an Internet connection, which dramatically increases security risks.

Use the contact form below so that you don’t become one of the sad statistics concerning attacks on industrial enterprises.