THE INDUSTRIAL SECURITY INSTITUTE
OT / industrial / ICS cybersecurity concepts from the perspective of the world’s most secure industrial sites. Truly secure sites ask different questions, and so get different answers. Subscribe to never miss an episode

EPS. 3 – COMMON RANSOMWARE
An engineer searching for technical information from an ICS-connected engineering workstation accidentally downloads ransomware. The malware exploits known vulnerabilities that have not yet been patched on the industrial network, encrypts the engineering workstation, and spreads to most of the Windows hosts on the industrial control system. Most Windows hosts in the industrial network are encrypted, shutting down the control system. The impaired control system is unable to bring about an orderly shutdown. Within a few minutes, the plant operator triggers an emergency safety shutdown. The emergency shutdown procedure damages important equipment at the plant, impairing production for months, even after the ransomware has been cleaned out of the control system and the plant is restarted.

THE TOP 20 CYBERATTACKS ON INDUSTRIAL CONTROL SYSTEMS
These Top 20 attacks have been selected to represent cyber threats to industrial sites across a wide range of circumstances, consequences and sophistication. No industrial operation is free of risk, and different industrial enterprises may legitimately have different “appetites” for certain types of risks. In this series we show how to use the Top 20 Cyberattacks to compare the strength of two security postures at a hypothetical water treatment plant: Defence in depth 2013 (software based security) vs. that same security posture plus a unidirectional security gateway device providing hardware-enfonced security). We ask the question, does either defensive posture reliably defeat each attack? Over the course of 20 episodes we build a score card that can be used to easily communicate risk reduction benefits to business decision-makers who are not familiar with cyber-security.

ABOUT ANDERW GINTER
At Waterfall, Andrew leads a team of experts who work with the world’s most secure industrial sites. He is author of two books on industrial security, a co-author of the Industrial Internet Consortium’s Security Framework, and the co-host of the Industrial Security Podcast. Andrew spent 35 years designing SCADA system products for Hewlett Packard, IT/OT connectivity products for Agilent Technologies, and OT/ICS security products for Industrial Defender and Waterfall Security Solutions.