HEALTH & SAFETY
BETTER CYBER PROTECTION
KOLABTREE
Using biometrics in industrial control systems
The State of Industrial Cybersecurity
Report 2018, from the Kaspersky Lab,
found that 54 per cent of respondents
who had experienced a cyber-attack
on their industrial control system (ICS)
noticed damage to their products or
services. Industrial control systems are
critical to business success, so how can
we protect them better? Here Emil Pricop,
senior lecturer at the Automatic Control,
Computers & Electronics Department of
the Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti,
Romania, and freelance scientist for
Kolabtree, explains how biometrics can
increase the physical security of industrial
control systems.
Control systems are critical components
that run the air conditioning in our homes,
the safety of our cars, and even industrial
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facilities — whether it’s a petrochemical
plant, oil refinery, power plant or water and
sewage treatment plant. In the last decade,
the control systems became one of the
preferred target for hackers. The attacks can
be devastating for a business in more ways
than just financially — they can completely
disrupt processes, risk human safety, cause
environmental harm, result in the leak of
confidential information and ultimately lead
to the shut-down of an entire facility.
this, businesses are turning to biometric
techniques.
BIOMETRIC SECURITY DNA analysis is an extremely accurate
biometric technique, but it is certainly not
a practical one as it is invasive and time
consuming. Voice recognition is less time
consuming, but it still takes over three
seconds to verify the user, which would be
too slow if immediate action was needed. It
can also be inaccurate — a person’s voice
can change if they are ill, or a recording
could be used to trick the system.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is one
way of providing physical security for an
ICS. Authorised personnel are given a card
that enables access to the correct parts
of a facility. However, cards can be stolen
and used by someone else, and to prevent Fingerprint analysis is one of the oldest
biometric methods and one that is
affordable and well accepted. An alternative
is palm vein template recognition, a non-
invasive collection technique, where users
can scan their palms for access.