If hindsight is 20/20, then disaster prevention usually gets fine-tuned only after the most unfortunate events occur. Such is the overarching objective of the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) Oil and Gas and Sulfur Operations in the Outer Continental Shelf-Blowout Preventer Systems...
Guest blog The recent WannaCry/WannaCrypt, attacks received global attention in the news and social media. Its widespread impact and rapid propagation shocked and scared people around the world. Concern was amplified by reports that it involved a stolen NSA exploit (EternalBlue). Existing Microsoft patches for the...
A short while back, I was asked to speak at an event held by The Cyber Resilient Energy Delivery Consortium (CREDC), a research and development initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Its research focuses on cybersecurity and cyber-resiliency of energy delivery systems for...
Guest Blog To the non-expert, cyber security can look tantalizingly simple: Just put a guard in front of your stuff and use it to keep the bad guys out. This observation tracks closely with the non-computing analogy of facility entry guards, a favorite comparison brought up...
Recently, Waterfall joined 24 vendors from Industrie 4.0 (I4.0) and the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) in demonstrating secure cloud interconnectivity at the Hannover Messe industrial event. Unidirectional gateway technology and strong encryption was at the heart of this outsourced security demo, illustrating how to benefit...
When covering for risk, best practice teaches us to categorize, measure and profile our vulnerabilities. Intel - the world’s largest and most highly valued semiconductor chip maker and inventor of the processors found in most personal computers - knows this process well. Countless tests are...
"WannaCrypt" or “WannaCry” is the latest ransomware variant responsible for shutting down countless organizations, including critical infrastructures and manufacturing sites as large as Renault and Nissan. The cybersecurity advice most probably followed by all these sites was to use firewalls to keep their networks “safe”...
The Department of Homeland Security recently stated that it had received reports of 59 cyber incidents at energy facilities last year- up nearly a third from the previous year. Those 59 were only a fraction of the 290 incidents the DHS combatted last year across...
Recently we’ve received a lot of interest from water and waste management facilities regarding our Unidirectional Security Gateway- which is making me wonder what’s brought this on? Let’s look at the facts. The primary source for cyber risks in water and waste management facilities comes...
This is a question that might not even emerge initially in the minds of IT security professionals. However, when we take a closer look, the differences are clear. Consider the history of IT and SCADA networks. The original "killer app" for IT networks was mainframe...