Robert Fairfax, Author at Industrial Cybersecurity Pulse

Hacks & Attacks

Colonial Pipeline attack debrief and lessons

In the past decade, we have seen an alarming increase in attacks on critical energy infrastructure, with cyber incidents occurring across any number of geographies and industries. Common attacks can involve ransomware on a corporation’s…

Courtesy: Chris Vavra, CFE Media and Technology

IT/OT

System integrators’ role in the OT cybersecurity crisis

Whether it’s the shift toward remote work or the growing importance of digital business, trends that have been around for years have only been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This holds true for the digital…

Many wonder where to start when attempting to protect embedded systems in OT cybersecurity? Here are some great places to start.

Threats & Vulnerabilities

How the American Jobs Plan could improve critical infrastructure cybersecurity

Some of the key provisions of the American Jobs Plan that support critical infrastructure cybersecurity include: Make $20 billion in energy infrastructure investments for state, local and tribal governments contingent on cyber modernization Create a new tax…

Networks

Improve legacy critical infrastructure protection

Distributed network protocol 3.0 (DNP3) is the second most-widely used serial communications protocol in industrial control systems (ICS), after Modbus. As EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) mentioned in a 2019 technical update: “it is the…

Threats & Vulnerabilities

Ignoring cyber risk is dangerous to society and your bottom line

To anyone working in cybersecurity, it is not news that just about every critical infrastructure industry is significantly behind on their path toward cybersecurity maturity. There continues to be a fundamental friction between the estimation…

Serial Communications exist primarily at Levels 0 and 1 between logic controllers and legacy field devices –the most critical portions of the control system where physical processes occur. Courtesy: Cynalytica

IT/OT

System integrators and serial communication monitoring: Why it matters

Historically, industrial control systems (ICS) could exist as a closed-loop, with an air-gapped network and a solid physical security program insulating them from the outside world. An operator could trust the integrity of their operations…