Intelligent CISO Issue 36 | Page 45

industry unlocked that this ‘ attack ’ could have been mitigated – or at least the impact reduced – with the application of basic security controls and a wellimplemented reference architecture .
What are foundational security controls ?
Foundational security controls can include antivirus tools , system backup , validated patch updates , configuration hardening and application whitelisting , which producers can integrate with their Operational Technology – the ‘ seatbelts and airbag ’ – to provide basic cybersecurity at scale .
In the future , these security technologies will likely be government-mandated components or functionalities required during the design of critical infrastructure .
The importance of strong foundational security was recently illustrated by a
Rob Putman , Global Manager , Cybersecurity Services at ABB
project involving ABB and a chemical company . The chemical company wanted to automate its cybersecurity compliance reporting and develop simple use cases to monitor the security posture of its control system environment .
Instead of going from no monitoring to a 24 / 7 fully monitored security operation , ABB tested the system by disabling the audit log function in the Distributed Control System ( DCS ), which raised an alarm . This allowed the chemical company to demonstrate that it was prepared for one of many potential actions an attacker may take during an attack life cycle .
More fundamentally , a partner of ABB explained that they weren ’ t able to centrally aggregate and process another vendor ’ s antivirus events across an array of over 130 control systems . There was no way of centrally monitoring when such events occurred , where in the DCS environment they occurred and in which specific node and host they occurred .
Reference Architecture
Operational Technology providers can help build strong foundational security . For producers looking to implement remote access and cloud connectivity , as well as conducting threat modelling , www . intelligentciso . com
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