Transportation – Waterfall Security Solutions https://waterfall-security.com Unbreachable OT security, unlimited OT connectivity Tue, 09 Sep 2025 07:44:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://waterfall-security.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/cropped-favicon2-2-32x32.png Transportation – Waterfall Security Solutions https://waterfall-security.com 32 32 TSA NOPR for Pipelines, Rail & Bussing – Enhancing Surface Cyber Risk Management https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/tsa-nopr-for-pipelines-rail-bussing-enhancing-surface-cyber-risk-management/ Tue, 26 Nov 2024 13:07:01 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=28561 The TSA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Enhancing Surface Cyber Risk Management is out. This is the long-awaited regulation that replaces the temporary security directives issued after the Colonial Pipeline incident.

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TSA NOPR for Pipelines, Rail & Bussing – Enhancing Surface Cyber Risk Management

The TSA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Enhancing Surface Cyber Risk Management is out. This is the long-awaited regulation that replaces the temporary security directives issued after the Colonial Pipeline incident.
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Andrew Ginter

TSA NOPR for Pipelines Rail Bussing – Enhancing Surface Cyber Risk Management

“This…replaces the temporary security directives issued after the Colonial Pipeline incident…[which] had to be re-issued annually. The new regulation will be permanent – at least until it’s changed or revoked.

Oil PipelineThe TSA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Enhancing Surface Cyber Risk Management is out. This is the long-awaited regulation that replaces the temporary security directives issued after the Colonial Pipeline incident. Those directives had to be re-issued annually. The new regulation will be permanent – at least until it’s changed or revoked.

So I’m trying to read through the proposed rule, and the document is daunting – 105 pages of technical language intermixed with very legal language, riddled with cross-references, only some of which I understand. That said, at a high level, the new rule, if passed as-is, looks to apply to some:

  • 73 of 620 freight railroads in the USA,

  • 34 of 92 public transportation & passenger railroads,

  • 115 of 2,105 of the nation’s pipelines, and

  • 71 bus owner/operators,


though the bussing rules seem focused on incident reporting rather than full-blown cybersecurity programs.

Some of the most confusing legal language seems focused on rationalizing how the TSA issues security directives, since before this it seems there were different procedures for security directives applicable to different forms of transportation. Another bunch of confusing language seems to be rationalizing physical security requirements and separating them from cybersecurity requirements. And then it gets a little bit more readable:

  • 49 CFR Part 1580 – Freight Rail Transportation Security – starts on pp 71

  • 49 CFR Part 1582 – Public Transportation and Passenger Rail Security – starts on pp 82

  • 49 CFR Part 1584 – Highway and Motor Carrier Cybersecurity – starts on pp 92, and

  • 49 CFR Part 1586 – Pipeline Facilities and Systems Security – starts on pp 96

train railway

The freight rail, passenger rail & pipeline sections have a lot of familiar language. I haven’t gone through them line by line comparing them to the previous security directives – eg: TSA SD 2021-02E the current directive that applies to pipelines – but just reading through the requirements rings a lot of bells in terms of language I’ve read before.

At a high level, in-scope owners and operators will need to:

  • Carry out annual enterprise-wide evaluations documenting the current state of cybersecurity and comparing that state to a ‘target profile,’

  • Document a ‘target profile’ that includes at least the measures and outcomes described in the new law / rule, and ideally includes all of the applicable parts of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF),

  • Develop an implementation plan and identify people responsible for carrying out the plan, and

    Identify critical cyber systems and detailed measures to protect those systems, as well as detailed measures to detect cyber incidents, respond to them and recover from them.


At a higher level, as you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m struggling to understand the legalese. I would welcome a call from someone who can explain how to make sense of the complicated cross-references. I promise to take detailed notes on the process and publish them as an article so other interested people can figure out how to do the same – with copious thanks to my generous instructor.

BTW – one of the reasons I’m trying to understand this new rule is because I’m hoping to include insights into the rule in a webinar that’s coming up: Evolving Global OT Cyber Guidelines, Recent Developments and What is Driving Them.

If you’re interested in seeing what’s common, what’s different, and what’s changing in this space, please do join us on Wednesday Nov 27.

I also invite you to get a complimentary copy of my latest book, Engineering-grade OT Security: A Manager’s Guide.

About the author
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Andrew Ginter

Andrew Ginter is the most widely-read author in the industrial security space, with over 23,000 copies of his three books in print. He is a trusted advisor to the world's most secure industrial enterprises, and contributes regularly to industrial cybersecurity standards and guidance.
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Hitting Tens of Thousands of Vehicles At Once | Episode 131 https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/hitting-tens-of-thousands-of-vehicles-at-once-episode-131/ Thu, 26 Sep 2024 08:44:39 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=27586 Compromise a cloud service and tens thousands of vehicles can be affected all at once. Matt MacKinnon of Upstream Security walks us through the world of cloud security for connected vehicles, transport trucks, tractors, and other "stuff that moves."

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Hitting Tens of Thousands of Vehicles At Once | Episode 131

Compromise a cloud service, and tens thousands of vehicles can be affected at once. Matt MacKinnon of Upstream Security walks us through the world of cloud security for connected vehicles, transport trucks, tractors, and other "stuff that moves."

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Waterfall team

Podcast: 131 about OT Security for Cars

“…the idea that someone might impact a bunch of vehicles to cause accidents is real. That absolutely could happen.”

Available on

About Matt MacKinnon and Upstream Security

Matt’s experience prior to his role at Upstream Security includes working at JupiterOne, Shift5 and Armis Security.

Upstream Security (LinkedIn Page) provides a cloud-based data management platform specifically designed for connected vehicles. This platform specializes in automotive cybersecurity detection and response (V-XDR) and data-driven applications. Essentially, it transforms highly distributed vehicle data into a centralized and structured data lake, allowing customers to build connected vehicle applications. A key component of this platform is AutoThreat® Intelligence, an automotive cybersecurity threat intelligence solution that provides cyber threat protection and actionable insights. Upstream integrates seamlessly into the customer’s existing environment and vehicle security operations centers (VSOC). Upstream’s clientele includes major automotive OEMs, suppliers, and other stakeholders, and they protect millions of vehicles.

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Transcript of this podcast episode #131: 
Hitting Tens of Thousands of Vehicles At Once | Episode 131

Please note: This transcript was auto-generated and then edited by a person. In the case of any inconsistencies, please refer to the recording as the source.

Nathaniel Nelson
Welcome, everyone, to the Industrial Security Podcast. My name is Nate Nelson. I’m here with Andrew Ginter, the Vice President of Industrial Security at Waterfall Security Solutions, who’s going to introduce the subject and guest of our show today. Andrew, how’s it going?

Andrew Ginter
I’m very well. Thank you, Nate. Our guest today is Matt McKinnon, the Director of Global Strategic Alliances at Upstream Security. And I don’t know if you remember a number of episodes ago, we had a gentleman on talking about the CAN bus in automobiles, the hundreds of CPUs in in a modern automobile and how that CAN bus, that that network of of automation reached out to the cloud, to the vendor cloud, whoever built the automobile.

Matt and upstream secure that cloud. So we’re going to be talking about the security of of cloud systems connected to automobiles.

Nathaniel Nelson
Then without further ado, here’s your conversation with Matt.

Andrew Ginter
Hello, Matt, and welcome to the show. Before we get started, can I ask you to introduce yourself, to say a few words about your background and about the good work that you’re doing at Upstream Security?

Matt MacKinnon
Andrew, thanks for having me today. Yeah, I’ve been working in network security or cybersecurity in general for the better part of the last 25 years. Got started in network security, endpoint security, IoT security, did even some DOD work and some cloud security. So kind of been around the cybersecurity market in a lot of different ways. Most recently, I’ve been working in automotive or mobility IoT security.

Connected cars networksThis is in particular where I am today is upstream security where we protect cars and trucks and tractors and pretty much anything that moves around and is connected via cellular network. I was really drawn to this company because of the connection between mobility and things that physical things that move around in cybersecurity and it really is easy to relate to everyday life and very rewarding to be able to work on something that we can sort of see and feel and observe in our everyday life.

Andrew Ginter
And our topic today is automobiles. I mean, we had a guest on a little while ago talking about the CAN bus in automobiles, in trucks, in you know things that move. You’re not talking about the CAN bus. You’re still talking about things that move, but you’re up in the cloud. Can you explain to us what is that? What’s happening out there? How how does it work and and why should we be worried?

Matt MacKinnon
It’s a great question. And it’s really important to think about what’s happening with with cars and with trucks and how they operate today and and what’s how we think they’re going to change in the future as well. So if we think about your modern car, it has really got a lot of computers in it. Everything from the infotainment system to the the most modern things have autonomous driving. So in those cars, the car itself can be can be compromised.

Those cars communicate with the cloud. They send a lot of telematic data about where they are and what they’re doing into the cloud. This is very useful for a lot of different purposes. We also have app on our phones. We can schedule a remote start or we can schedule service of the dealer and things like that on our phones.

When we get into electronic vehicles, we have to charge them. And so we connect them to charging stations and we have to authenticate and pay for electricity. And so what Upstream has realized and recognized many years ago was that no longer can you worry about just securing the car itself. The car is part of this connected ecosystem. And if you’re not looking at that entire ecosystem at once, you’re really not looking at the full spectrum of what can be compromised. The other thing that’s interesting to look at from the last five or 10 years is Upstream does an annual report about the state of automotive cybersecurity. And we’ve been doing it since about 2019. There’s really been a pretty dramatic shift in in the cybersecurity or automotive cybersecurity over that time. If you look back 2014, 2015, people were trying to compromise or hack or steal one car at a time. But if you look at the data today, that’s not the case at all.

Over 95% of the attacks that happened last year didn’t even require physical access to the vehicle at all. Over 50% of the attacks that happened at last year were attacks against thousands, if not millions of vehicles at one time. So we’re no longer talking about bad actors just trying to steal your car or my car. We’re talking about bad actors who are really going after these connected systems that we just talked about and and how can they compromise that entire system, not just one guard car at a time.

Nathaniel Nelson
Andrew, before we get into all of the detail of what he said there, can you just give me a brief overview? We’ve talked about it in a couple of episodes before, but what does the threat attack surface of my car look like? Because I have some notion that my center console is a computer and maybe some other parts of the car, but it sounds like it’s more than that.

Andrew Ginter
Yeah, we had Ken Tyndall on and he was one of the designers of the CAN bus, which is the the dominant communication system that’s used in modern vehicles. I recall that he said, look, Andrew, at the rate at which we’re adding features to the vehicle. For example, if you have a feature that says you can only start the car if your foot’s on the brake. He says for each feature we used to run and a wire, a small wire with an analog signal from let’s say the brake sensor directly to the logic that that controlled the the key and the ignition.

And there was a lot of features being added. And so for every feature when one part of the car was relevant to another part of the car, you had to run a new wire. He said they did a projection at the rate at which new features were being added, they figured that new cars by the year 2050 would be solid copper, which is, of course, nonsense. And so they invented the CAN bus. And so now most devices in in vehicles that are relevant to a feature like the brakes when you’re starting a car or something like that, they have a little CPU.

And they get power on one wire, they get the the network communications on another little wire, and now every piece of the car has one, two wires, or maybe one if you can run both power and and signal over the same wire, has one or two wires running in with not a gazillion, one for each sort of feature that is affecting another part of the car, which means a modern car has two or three hundred CPUs in it with, each CPU has a little wire or two running to it. This is this is the modern vehicle. There’s a lot of software in the vehicle.

Nathaniel Nelson
And then how does that connect to Matt’s domain, the cloud?

Andrew Ginter
Yeah, so many vehicles are connected through the cellular network or by other means, satellite, whatever, but most often I think it’s cellular, to the vendor. Whoever made the car or Matt’s business upstream is upstream security is interested in the big 18 wheelers and tractors in anything that moves. But let’s stay with cars for now. You buy a car from whoever, Chrysler, Ford, whatever. A lot of the cars are connected cellularly into the cloud so that, you can on your cell phone start them remotely. You can affect charging for electric vehicles. There’s these networks of two and 300 CPUs in the vehicle now connected through the internet into cloud systems. And of course, anything connected through the internet can be attacked through the internet. The cloud systems can be attacked through the internet. And this is the focus of of today’s conversation is what’s happening in these cloud systems and how are they being protected?

Nathaniel Nelson
Great. Understood. And maybe you get to this later in the interview. I don’t know. But the statement that stood out most to me already from Matt was this notion that over 50 percent of attacks that happened in the last year were against like thousands or millions of vehicles at one time.

Now I personally, I don’t know if I’m just not up on the news, have never heard of a cyber attack against a vehicle that wasn’t conducted in a laboratory setting or in an experiment of some kind. So what exactly was Matt referring to there?

Andrew Ginter
Well, that’s a good question. And that in fact is kind of the next question I asked our guests. So why don’t we get back to Matt and have him give us the answer first?

Andrew Ginter
So that’s a lot, hundreds, thousands, millions of vehicles at once. Can you give us an example? What has happened? What are we worried is going to happen?

Matt MacKinnon
Yeah, there’s there’s a variety of things that are happening. And I can give you a couple of real world examples of things that we’ve seen in our in our and our company’s interaction. So a couple of things. One is what what we like to call sort of a VIN-spray attack. And this is kind of interesting. So imagine a bad actor using the their app on their phone to actually try to authenticate to many vehicles at one time. So not just connecting to their car, but connecting to many vehicles at one time.

If you can trick a user into accepting, sure you can connect, now you’ve basically given control over of your vehicle and can remote start or modify your car, steal data off your car. Your attacker doesn’t have to be anywhere near you. It could be the other side of the world, but using the APIs that are connecting your phone like you are supposed to, but using it in a malicious way.

Matt MacKinnon
Similar kinds of examples with using enterprise IT and API security type of techniques to generate tokens to connect to many vehicles at one time, execute remote commands, but also cases that aren’t directly stealing data, things like odometer fraud, to roll back odometers so that your mileage on your car isn’t as high as you think or it really is to be able to get a warranty claim.

Matt MacKinnon
Or stealing stealing power from an EV charging station. So these are all variations on real things that are happening right now today. Some are very bad with people trying to take over. Other things are people trying to steal data, and then other times just people trying to sort of steal service or steal some money.

Andrew Ginter
So can we talk a little bit about who’s doing this? I mean, rolling back the odometer, anybody who wants to cheat someone does this for their vehicle, for one vehicle. There’s little benefit to be had in rolling back the odometer for a million vehicles. So people might want to tamper with their own vehicle. Who’s tampering with other vehicles? Why why would people do this? What’s what’s in it for them?

Matt MacKinnon
Like a lot of things, at the end of the day, a lot of times it just comes down to money. A lot of these attacks are based around stealing data. And that and stealing data can be done by anybody. A lot of people all over the world, bad bad organizations that are, it’s ransomware effectively. It’s just a specific variety of ransomware, people trying to steal data, sell data, collect data from a variety of things. There’s another aspect which we’re not seeing a whole lot of, but it’s definitely a concern, which would be sort of the brand damage kind of thing. Imagine if someone were able to take control over an entire fleet of vehicles, some brand, some might make and model the the impact of the fear that would that would arise if that certain variety, I don’t want to name a specific one, obviously, but would just stop working tomorrow morning, right? That would be a tremendously upsetting to many, many people. So there’s a variety of things there, but at the end of the day, the vast majority of it is really about about stealing data that they can sell and other variations on ransomware trying to get data from these automotive manufacturers.

Andrew Ginter
OK. Now, we’re on the industrial security podcast. I worry about heavy industry. Now, what I don’t know is, how diverse the North American fleet of 18 wheelers, the big heavy trucks are. But I’m wondering, is it credible that let’s say a nation state, Russia or China, someone who is involved in a physical conflict and wants to impair the delivery of goods in either the country they’re fighting with or an allies like us of, let’s say, the Ukraine. Is it credible that that the Russians could break into one or two or three vendors, the people who build the big 18-wheelers and, I don’t know, remotely turn them all off? Like cripple a third of the nation’s 18-wheeler fleet by by GPS coordinate? Is that a credible scenario?

Matt MacKinnon
it is, and there’s there’s sort of two different dimensions that are worth talking about there. One is, as you’re describing, trucking is a huge part of our critical infrastructure and the, the CSIS definition of what is critical infrastructure. And it it ranges from manufacturing, emergency services and food and agriculture and healthcare and public safety. And it’s true that if you’re able to impact transportation, you can impact massively important components of the of the economy and our our defense systems.

So to your specific question, can you can you go after trucks and and and disable a fleet? in When we’re talking about cybersecurity, the big trucks are no different than cars. And frankly, heavy machinery for manufacturing or mining or agriculture, is they’re really all connected in very similar kind of ways.

And we have actually seen real attacks like that. Last year, there was an attack against something that’s called an electronic logging device. It’s not actually the truck itself. It’s actually an IoT device that gets installed in a truck. And that that device is used primarily for logging things like hours of service, speed and location, and used for expense management, fuel and tax records, and things like that.

But they’re also connected directly to the trucks and to the CAN bus of the trucks. So they become an attack factor. And if you can compromise this device, you now have access to the actual operating system of the truck. And this did happen last year. It was pretty pretty massive. There’s over 14 million trucks in the United States that use these things. I don’t know how many of them were actually impacted, but these devices were out for better part of a month. Drivers had to resort to paper and pencil to be able to track and log their hours. And to my knowledge, it didn’t actually impact the safety of those vehicles. Like your worst case scenario that you described again didn’t actually happen. But it gave it gave us a real sort of eye opener of how close you could get if you if you really wanted to.

Nathaniel Nelson
I was waiting for Matt to give some real life examples there and it sounds interesting although despite the severity of the case, I mean, he only mentioned it in one or two sentences. Andrew, I’m wondering if you have any more detail about that story he just referenced or any other similar ones like it.

Andrew Ginter
Well, I mean, waterfall does a threat report. And I remember considering that incident for the threat report. Our criteria are different, though. We count events that had physical consequences. And I remember looking at this event and saying, the logging was impaired, but the physical process, the trucks kept moving. They still delivered goods all over the nation. They weren’t delayed at all. some of the electronics, the the logging mechanism was impaired and the the operators, the drivers of the trucks had to fall back to manual operations, but the trucks kept going.

Andrew Ginter
In the report, what I recall, that transportation is the second biggest industry hit by cyber attacks where there were physical consequences. And most of those incidents were where IT systems were impaired that were essential to, let’s say, dispatching the trucks. So you had to stop the movement of the trucks because you couldn’t figure out where stuff had to go anymore. Shipments were delayed. This is the most common sort of physical consequence of of attacks where there were physical consequences in transportation. But this, the scenario here where the cloud’s involved, this is sort of more reminiscent of a story we talked about a few episodes ago. In the Ukraine, the the battlefront with the Russian invasion moved back and forth. And at one point, the Russian army stole a bunch of John Deere farm equipment, $5 million dollars worth of it from a a small town that they’d taken over, from a John Deere dealership. John Deere was unhappy with this, having their stolen equipment driven 700 kilometers into Russia. And so they reached through the cloud because they have cloud connections to all these vehicles and turned off all of the stolen equipment. So that’s an example, not of a cyber attack, but of a capability that, you know, that a lot of people looked at that incident and said, yay, stick it to the invaders. And then they said, just a minute. What just happened here? What if John Deere gets it into their head to turn off all of the vehicles, all of the tractors in Europe at planting at planting time? What if the Russians get it into their head to break into the John Deere cloud and do that? So this is kind of the scenario that we worry about. But in the the upstream threat report, most of the incidents I saw had to do with affecting thousands or millions of vehicles, had to do with theft of information from those vehicles and holding it for ransom.

Andrew Ginter
So that all makes sense. Now, one of the reasons I asked you on as a guest is because you folks in upstream have stuff that I’ve never heard of to address this problem. So, having defined the problem as, cloud systems can reach into cars and, there on the Internet, they can be compromised. Can you talk about your solution? What do you guys do and and how does that work?

Matt MacKinnon
Yeah. so if i were to to make For those of your listeners that are at enterprise IT or you’re familiar with enterprise security, maybe I’ll make an analogy and then I can dive into the details. The analogy if you understand sort of endpoint security or those kind of network security, you’re familiar with the term of an XDR platform, then you also need a Security Operations Center to manage that and you probably want some threat intelligence to support that. That’s effectively what we’ve developed for mobile devices, cars and trucks and tractors and other ones.

The three components there really are that XDR platform. And what does that mean? That means we collect data from the vehicle itself, from the telematics cloud, from the APIs that are calling in and out of it. And we stitch that all together in the cloud in what amounts to a digital twin of a vehicle. So for every vehicle we monitor, and we monitor over 25 million vehicles today, we’ve got a digital twin of exactly what it is, where it’s going, what it’s doing, how fast it’s going, everything from oil pressure to geolocation to what was the last remote command that came to it from some some API and in in the in the cloud. That gives us the ability to look for anomalies, look for patterns of bad behavior, to identify something like, hey, why did a remote start of that vehicle come from a country that the vehicle isn’t in?

Or little things like that, that seem very simple on the surface, but are very complex to see unless you have the breadth of data that we do. So that’s one piece. That’s the technology piece. But yeah you then need someone to actually operate this thing, right? So a Security Operation Center, or we’ve coined the term the Vehicle SOC or the V-SOC.

Matt MacKinnon
A lot of operators don’t really have this capability or the skill set themselves. So we offer that as a service on top of our platform. If you want, sometimes people would do it themselves. Sometimes people bring in an MSSP to do it. The last component of the solution, though, of course, is threat intelligence. And there’s lots of vendors out there, lots of providers that will do threat intelligence for classic enterprise things and some OT things. But what we do there is very, very specific to the automotive industry of every engine control unit and software version and hardware version and yeah there’s a cars are aggregations of many, many components. So we take that whole software bill of materials, hardware bill of materials, and we actually have a team that goes and does research and on the deep web, the dark web, interacts with the bad guys and figures out what they’re up to. And so when you put that all together, the XDR like monitoring the SOC service to actually operate the platform and then the threat intelligence of what are the bad guys really doing and what are they working on, you end up with this really complete end-to-end solution for being able to determine and monitor and make sure that vehicles and these devices are are actually secure.

Andrew Ginter
So you just described a detective capability, detection, threat intel, sort of deep knowledge or deep understanding of stuff. When there’s an incident, do you also respond and recover? And to prevent incidents, do you have anything that you embed in the vehicles or in the cloud of your protected customers?

Matt MacKinnon
Car of the futureYeah, so you’re right. Our primary focus is on detection. But all those other sort of respond and recover and protection are equally as important. So you’re right, we are not in-line. We don’t have a way ourselves to natively block something that’s happening. But we do that via integration in the partner ecosystem around us. So it may be that if it is a sort of more modern vehicle that is a software-defined vehicle, then there are ways that we can actually send commands or updates back to a vehicle to tell it to stop a behavior or to integrate with the network itself. So if a device is cellular connected, can we talk to the cellular provider to drop that connection to to do that? So we can’t do it directly, but we can integrate to do it. From a protection, like in the design time phase, we do work with the automotive manufacturers directly themselves, the chip makers, as well as the software providers and everybody from Red Hat to Amazon and Google to Qualcomm and others where we’re involved and can be influential in the way that those systems are designed, using our threat intelligence, using our knowledge of what bad actors are doing to help make sure that there is a secure development process and that these these devices have the right level of onboard protection in place.

Andrew Ginter
And you folks have been doing this for a while. You have customers, the big automobile makers all over the world. Can you talk about your customers experience using this technology?  What have you been finding? What’s of value to them?

Matt MacKinnon
It’s very interesting to see what people can use the platform for. We do see a lot of cyber attacks, and we talked about the VIN-spray and some of the API examples before. But the the platform we have, the visibility and vulnerability that we provide definitely lends itself to a bunch of other things. We’re seeing customers use the platform for identifying theft, stolen vehicles, and seeing vehicles being in places they shouldn’t be.

We’re seeing fleet operators use the data that we have to be able to monitor where fleets are or the vehicles being used appropriately. Everything from fast accelerations and breaking hard to other types of usage and mileage for fleet management. The other use case that’s emerging to be more common is related to electronic vehicles and the use of their batteries.

And there’s a lot of new behaviors people need to learn about properly but managing a battery. How do you charge it? When do you charge it? Things like that. And we can provide some really interesting insights to those kind of use cases. So customer satisfaction kind of things as well there. So it is one of the sort of fascinating and fun things about the the company and the product and the technology is the useages uses of the technology beyond just traditional cybersecurity.

Andrew Ginter
Nate, let me jump in here. The reason I asked that that question of Matt is that he’s got basically a detective, intrusion detection, attack detection technology here. And what I’ve observed is that almost whenever we deploy a detective technology into an OT system, we get operational insights as well as security insights. so I remember 20 years ago when I was deploying intrusion detection systems, the the first intrusion detection systems that went into industrial networks, the engineers at the site would be looking over our people’s shoulders while we were tuning the system, tuning out false alarms and figuring out the the the right way to to report on these systems. And they’d look over our shoulders and say, what’s that? That’s a lot of traffic between a a the engineering workstation and a particular PLC sucking up 80% of the bandwidth of the the network going to that you family of PLCs. What is that? And we dig into it. And well, a test had left had been left running on the on the engineering workstation that should have been turned off. This is why the whole system was a little bit sluggish, not slow enough that anyone raised an alarm about it, but once you lift the lid on these OT systems and you see what’s inside, often there’s operational benefits.

I mean, Matt talked about electric vehicles. Batteries are a huge part of electric vehicles. And these batteries, they’re chemical systems. If you deep discharge them or don’t deep discharge them enough or charge them sub-optimally, battery life is reduced. The lifetime of the battery, years of battery life, the range you get on the battery. And so, the sense I had is that before, the upstream security technology went in, fleet vehicle owners and electric vehicle vendors might not have had the data. They didn’t have the instrumentation to figure out, to gather all this data. well Upstream gathered all the data to figure out if there was an attack in progress, looked at the data and said, nope, there’s no attack in progress, and then go back to the vendors and say, by the way, we have all this data. Would you like to use it to change the design or improve the design or optimize the design of your electric vehicles so your batteries last longer? Yes, please.

So A lesson here is that there’s often secondary benefits to deploying detective security measures. You get insights by looking at data that you just didn’t have before.

Andrew Ginter
So this is all good. What I worry about as someone involved in industrial cybersecurity, heavy industry, mines, high speed passenger trains, I always worry about safety.

We’ve talked about sort of credible threats to safety sort of as as future concerns. Can you talk about what’s happening there? How how worried should I be about the the safety of my cloud connected vehicle?

Matt MacKinnon
It’s a really important topic. I think the good news is from your as an individual consumer, should you be worried about your connected vehicle from a safety perspective? Probably not. I certainly don’t worry about know driving my car every day. But I think and on a grander scale, safety really is important. Right. The fact that we’re talking about these software in vehicles, the connection between software and the physical world, you’ve got vehicles, cars, trucks, tractors, these things are thousands of pounds, they move at very high speeds. The implication of a cyber incident to safety is pretty dramatic. And fortunately, we’re not seeing that a whole lot, but it is possible and certainly could happen.

And so the idea that someone might impact a bunch of vehicles to cause accidents real. That absolutely could happen. We have seen, not quite safety, but we’ve seen attacks that were designed to cause congestion and gridlock by sort of car services all being called into one location and causing gridlock and that causes a lot of people start to panic when there’s gridlock. And so there’s variations on safety. But the other related concept that I think is also really important is actually I sort of borrow it from the military world. And that is the concept of readiness. And it applies to almost any industry, really. And that is your vehicle ready. And today a lot of people think about vehicles and readiness. They think about, is there gas in the tank? Did you change the oil? And is there air in the tires?

Well now that these vehicles are also software defined or have software connectivity, readiness includes is it cyber secure? And has someone impacted it from a cybersecurity perspective? And so it’s not a concept that I hear a lot of talk about today, but I do think it’s something we’re going to see more and more, especially in industries that rely on the vehicles for their business, like delivery and trucking and things like that.

Andrew Ginter
So that makes sense. You are deep into automotive cybersecurity. We’ve covered in this podcast a bit of what’s happening in the vehicle with you folks, a bit of what’s happening in the cloud. What’s the future hold? What is the future of of automation in vehicles large and small?

Matt MacKinnon
Yeah, what we’re seeing for sure is what is known in the industry as the software-defined vehicle, where really the cars and trucks and tractors and all these devices become computers first and vehicles second, almost. And so that increases the attack surface. I mean, the the power of these vehicles is pretty amazing in what they can do. And we’ve all been watching the future of autonomous driving. But that also applies to connected agriculture, autonomous agriculture, robotics in all sorts of ways. Right, so we’re seeing more and more of these vehicles or or mobile devices become connected and become software defined.

And that has amazing business benefits and and productivity benefits that we’re all going to benefit from. But it does increase the attack surface and just make these things much more complicated and much more targeted and secure. So it is an area that is rapidly evolving. we’d We’d be remiss to talk about this without throwing in the implications of Gen AI and how then the data that these things are going to generate and how that’s going to both make the bad guys better and make us better at protecting. But yeah, the the software-defined vehicle, the increased volume of software in vehicles is really the future of the industry, but then the impacts to cybersecurity are clear.

Andrew Ginter
Software-defined vehicles. That’s a scary thought for someone like me who’s focused on the worst that can possibly happen. But if we have people working on the problem, I’m confident we can work something out that’s going to keep us all safe. Thank you for bringing these insights and these worries to the podcast. Before I let you go, can I ask you, can you sum up for our listeners, what are what are the key takeaways here?

Matt MacKinnon
Yeah, thanks, Andrew. I would start by reiterating what you just said, which is, the good news is for the average consumer, the average driver, it’s just not something you have to spend that much time worried about. The manufacturers are taking it seriously. There’s, software vendors like upstream that are taking it seriously. We’re working on it. It does happen, but it’s not something everybody needs to – it’s like don’t stop driving. The next thing though is to also be aware that this isn’t just about cars, right? There are cars and trucks. I have alluded to agriculture and tractors but this is continuing to get bigger and bigger the the notion of software-defined anything and software to-defined vehicles of all varieties is is growing, not not slowing down.

As we get into autonomous vehicles, that’s going to make it even more and more complex. Don’t worry about it too much, but it is getting bigger at the same time. The last thing is, this is what we do at Upstream. The company was formed for this. It’s what we do. We take it seriously. We also care very much about sort of giving back and contributing. And that’s why we do the annual report and the research that we do that we publish, host webinars, most of which is information sharing and thought leadership and not trying to sell stuff. So please check us out and take a look at that report. It is free and anybody can take a look at it and we’re already starting to work on next year’s now.

Nathaniel Nelson
So, Andrew, cars are a microcosm for cybersecurity at large.

Andrew Ginter
Indeed, and the cloud is coming. The cloud is coming, and it’s coming to many industries. In my experience, manufacturing, all kinds of manufacturing, is using cloud systems quite intensively. More sort of conventional, critical infrastructure, water systems, power plants are using cloud systems somewhat and increasingly, and it looks like the cloud has arrived for automobiles and other kinds of moving equipment and is is being used fairly intensively. And all of those uses, I think, are going to increase. This is the future. And of course, what we have then is, lots more software involved, lots of opportunity to attack that software.

Attacks are targeting cloud systems and there can be physical consequences. So I think it’s a big new field. It’s just going to become more important as the years go by and is, I guess, something more, something new to worry about in, in the field of industrial cybersecurity.

Nathaniel Nelson
Well with that, thank you to Matt McKinnon for his interview with you. And Andrew, as always, thank you for speaking with me.

Andrew Ginter
It’s always a pleasure Nate, thank you.

Nathaniel Nelson
This has been the Industrial Security Podcast from Waterfall. Thanks to everyone out there listening.

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Cybersecurity for the rail industry eBook https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/cybersecurity-for-the-rail-industry-ebook/ Sun, 14 Jan 2024 06:26:35 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=4672 The post Cybersecurity for the rail industry eBook appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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Cybersecurity for the rail industry eBook

Cybersecurity for the rail industry eBook

Rail system digitalization is yielding unprecedented efficiency gains and customer service improvements. Digitalization, however, requires increased connectivity. Operations Control Center (OCC) networks are now routinely exposed to IT networks, and through IT networks to the Internet, dramatically increasing the rail system’s attack surface. This degree of cyber risk is unacceptable for vital networks such as signaling, train safety and energy networks.

The solution is not to stop becoming more efficient or to stop automating and connecting our systems. The solution is to understand the complete spectrum of risks, including safety and reliability risks, and to design safety and security solutions into our systems, just as we currently do to protect Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and other important information resources.

A new eBook from Waterfall explores how to powerful and practical cybersecurity to vital networks at the Operations Control Center in a manner consistent with IEC 62443 and the upcoming CENELEC TS-50701 cybersecurity standards. The most powerful security measures are also the most future-proof. 

Download Waterfall’s latest eBook now to explore future-proof cyber protections against cyber adversaries from the mundane to the most sophisticated.

In this eBook

arrow red right  The safety imperative in rail

arrow red right  Connectivity at the operations control center

arrow red right  Managing cybersecurity in vital networks

arrow red right  Unidirectional gateways vs. Firewalls

arrow red right  A reference architecture for the control center

arrow red right  Regional passenger rail use case

arrow red right  Unidirectional benefits

About the author
Picture of Dr. Jesus Molina,  Director of Industrial Security

Dr. Jesus Molina, Director of Industrial Security

Jesus Molina is Waterfall’s Director of Industrial Security. He is a security expert in both OT and IT security. A former hacker, his research on offensive security in industrial systems has been echoed by many publications and media, including Wired and NPR.

Mr. Molina has acted as chair of several security organizations, including the Trusted Computing Group and the IoT Internet Consortium. He is the co-writer of the Industrial Internet Security Framework and the author of several security-related patents and academic research papers. Mr. Molina holds a M.S. and a Ph.D from the University of Maryland.

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Rail Cybersecurity – New Solution for an Old Industry | Recorded Webinar https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/rail-cybersecurity-new-solution-for-an-old-industry-recorded-webinar/ Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/uncategorized/rail-cybersecurity-new-solution-for-an-old-industry-recorded-webinar/ The post Rail Cybersecurity – New Solution for an Old Industry | Recorded Webinar appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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About the Recorded Webinar

In this presentation, viewers will be introduced to Christopher Crawford, a renowned thought leader in the Transportation Industry, who will delve into the fascinating history of rail transportation cybersecurity. Mr. Crawford will highlight the evolution of systems integration and complexity, leading to the core concepts of Operational Technology (OT) Cyber Security in the rail sector. He will emphasize its growing importance due to escalating business demands for connectivity and digitalization.

The presentation will feature a review of practical use cases that demonstrate the real-world impact of cybersecurity threats on transit systems. Mr. Crawford will also discuss upcoming standards and TSA Cyber Directives, including the emerging TS 50701, which focuses on network segmentation as a key strategy to improve cybersecurity. By exploring these topics, viewers will gain an understanding of the historical context of rail transportation cybersecurity, the growing importance of OT Cyber Security, and the steps being taken to address cybersecurity risks in the industry.

Key Take Aways

The key takeaways from this presentation will emphasize the need for greater connectivity, the rising cybersecurity challenges, and the ongoing development of enhanced security standards. Overall, this presentation will provide valuable insights for those interested in the Transportation Industry and its cybersecurity challenges.

Watch the Full Recording

Resources – Rail Transportation Cybersecurity eBook

CYBER SECURITY IMPERATIVES FOR VITAL RAIL NETWORKS OPERATION CONTROL CENTERS

Explore future-proof cyber protections against cyber adversaries from the mundane to the most sophisticated.

About Chris Crawford, Transportation Industry Director – Waterfall Security Solutions

Chris Crawford leads Waterfall’s cybersecurity strategy and business development functions for transportation industries including rail transport and airports. In addition to his role at Waterfall, Chris is a Managing Partner at nTEG and a co-chair of the Cyber and New Technologies Committee at the American Public Transportation Association.

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Cybersecurity Risk Assessment using IEC 62443 | Episode 104 https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/cybersecurity-risk-assessment-using-iec-62443/ Sun, 23 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/uncategorized/cybersecurity-risk-assessment-using-iec-62443/ The post Cybersecurity Risk Assessment using IEC 62443 | Episode 104 appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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5 Key Takeaways From New ‘UITP Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity’ Report https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/5-key-takeaways-from-new-uitp-practical-guidance-on-cybersecurity-report/ Mon, 16 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/uncategorized/5-key-takeaways-from-new-uitp-practical-guidance-on-cybersecurity-report/ The post 5 Key Takeaways From New ‘UITP Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity’ Report appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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Let’s start with big kudos to the authors and the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) for their recent publication, ‘Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity: Requirements in Tendering,’ which is the first of its kind in the transportation industry.  The report provides an unmatched consolidation of thought leadership on cybersecurity in the public transportation industry and across the multiple modalities of passenger rail (Metro, commuters, and Tramway) and bus.  It is an excellent read and well worth your time.

The publication is very timely for Railway and Public Transport Operators (PTOs), as 2022 saw an unprecedented number of cyber-attacks on critical infrastructures around the globe.  In addition to the rise in the number of attacks, there is an increase in attack sophistication enabled by tools and methods now freely available on the dark web and traditionally seen only in the hands of state-sponsored actors.

UITP Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity Document Thumbnail
UITP Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity

The UITP’s Cyber Working Group, consisting of internationally recognized transport operators, OEMs, and solution vendors, identified the problem of lack of clarity and consistency across PTOs and the supporting supply chain to address cybersecurity.  As a result, the UITP Cyber Working Group agreed to pool resources and bring forward a practical and cross-functionally applicable publication recommending cyber solutions to the problem.

There are five noteworthy areas that are addressed in the UITP guide that are best represented as needs:

  • Need for more cybersecurity awareness in public transportation
  • Need for PTOs to distinguish between OT vs. IT systems
  • Need for commonality and reference to applicable cybersecurity standards
  • Need for cybersecurity alignment of PTO buyers and vendors
  • Need for more cybersecurity engineering in the V-Model

Need for more cybersecurity awareness in public transportation

Public transportation has always considered safety the top priority and cultivated the culture and engineering disciplines commensurate with this priority.  Cybersecurity, on the other hand, is a relatively new discipline.  Despite its relative newness, safety and security are siblings. The interdependencies between the two have grown ever more apparent over the last decade with the increased need to share data.  Digitization initiatives in public transport are cross-functional endeavors touching almost every employee, from those in the legal department, procurement, engineering, and through to the maintenance worker in the depot.  

No one is immune from the digital, and in public transportation, if it is not steel or concrete, then it’s a functional system with a digital element, either firmware or software.   This reality that digital is everywhere drives the need for more cybersecurity awareness in public transportation organizations, including setting up the right policies, procedures, training, roles, and responsibilities so that every department contributes to improving the organization’s security posture.

Need for PTOs to distinguish between OT vs. IT systems

Digitization of the transportation industry has been primarily led in recent years by the need to share data, and this opening up of operational systems to share data invariably has introduced new cyber threat vectors.  By way of example, the need to share train location information (operational system-derived data) with publicly available mobile applications network-connected to the internet.

Even though transportation systems are engineered to be inherently safe (think ‘fail safe’), the interdependencies between critical Operational Systems (OT) and business-critical Information Technology (IT) related systems make it difficult to create precise segmentation, especially in a ‘brown field’ / existing transportation operation.

The distinction between OT vs. IT is the challenge that must be addressed so a PTO can confidently state that a cyber-attack on an IT system shall not impact safe operations.  Moreover, the importance for PTOs to classify systems as OT vs. IT acknowledges that they understand the material differences in the consequences of IT systems being attacked vs. an OT system being attacked, i.e., business consequences (IT) versus physical consequences (OT).

No CISO wants to wake up to learn that a phishing email or a denial-of-service attack on an IT-related system has directly impacted a traction power substation or signaling system, which is vital to the safe movement of passengers from New York to Boston, or on Metro Line 1 of Paris.

UITP Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity Operational Control Center (stock.adobe.com)
UITP Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity Operational Control Center (stock.adobe.com)

Need for commonality and reference to applicable cybersecurity standards

Public Transport and Railway Operators are very familiar with the need and benefits of standards.  However, while other critical infrastructure industries (e.g., the Energy sector) have made several years of headway on contextualizing and applying relevant cybersecurity standards, PTOs are only recently addressing cybersecurity at the level commensurate with being designated as a critical infrastructure custodian.  Why is this the case?  The main reason is historically poor cross-functional cybersecurity awareness.  Another contributing factor has been the need for more consistent and referenceable cybersecurity standards in the passenger transportation domain.

Fortunately for Public Transport and Railway Operators, instructions on how to apply the well-established industrial control system (ICS) cybersecurity standard IEC 62443 has been published by CENELEC in the form of Technical Specification TS 50701. And now the UITP Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity report provides valuable examples of how Railway procurement personnel should  use TS 50701 to help write tendering documents for any Systems under Consideration (SuC).

Need for cybersecurity expectation alignment of PTO buyers and vendors

The need for common references to relevant cybersecurity standards in transport also helps to establish joint authority across multiple functional areas (procurement, engineering, supply chain) and, most importantly, between buyers and vendors.

Vendors complain that PTOs’ tendering requirements must be more explicit, specific, and applicable in the System under Consideration. In addition, PTOs need help finding within their internal organizations the expertise required to sufficiently establish the cybersecurity requirements that will meet their future needs and do so in a manner that is not bespoke, outdated, or wholly not applicable to the SuC.


UITP Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity Cybersecurity Procurement Management (stock.adobe.com)
Cybersecurity Procurement Management

There is a mutual benefit for PTOs and vendors to ensure cybersecurity expectation alignment.  On the one hand, vendors who have invested in their product roadmaps to meet stringent cybersecurity certifications and standards are afforded the appropriate level of consideration during a request for qualification (RFQ).  Equally, PTOs can quickly weed out vendors who cannot demonstrate that they understand or are prepared to introduce solutions into the OT environment of a safety-first critical infrastructure environment.

Need for cybersecurity engineering in the V-Model

PTO and Railway engineering professionals are very familiar with the product/systems life cycle V-Model, which provides a systematic phased approach from project/product/system concept through development and implementation to ongoing operations and maintenance.  The V-model is foundational in the systems engineering discipline and is used regularly to manage risk, validate, and verify that what was intended to be realized is now performing in line with original requirements.

Security by design must also be foundational in critical infrastructures such as railways and metros. As such, there is a need to verify and validate cyber-related deterministic behavior in OT digital systems.   Practically, this means that OT systems perform as designed and are not subject to external or internet-based cyber-attacks.   There is indeed no such thing as 100% secure, as security is fundamentally a continuum; however, reducing the cybersecurity threat as low as reasonably possible (ALRAP) is consistent with the core principle of cyber network engineering.  By way of example, this rude awakening of an IT system hack propagating to an OT safety-critical system can be engineered out of the realm of possibility with IT vs. OT segmented networks, utilizing unidirectional gateway technology.

The UITP guide highlights the need for cybersecurity engineering in the system/product life cycle and recommends that a specific Information Security System (ISS) document/chapter be included in all public transportation tender documents of relevant systems under consideration.  This ISS will outline the main principles and detailed requirements for which prospective solution vendors must align themselves.

Cyber-by-design: Meeting the complexity of Passenger Transport and Rail Operations

Meeting the complexities in system designs of passenger and rail transport operations with a cyber-by-design approach is essential, and with the recent release of the UITP ‘Practical Guidance on Cybersecurity Requirements’ report, the job of PTOs tendering for a new system under consideration is now made easier.

Again, a big shout out and kudos to the authors and UITP Cyber Working Group, especially our Waterfall colleagues Serge Van Themsche, Jesus Molina, and Andrew Ginter, for bringing clarity and practical guidance on cybersecurity requirements to the transportation industry.   The usefulness of this effort across multiple stakeholders will be positively received. More importantly, if the advice is followed, there is no question that the security posture within the industry will be improved.

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Strengths and Weaknesses of the New TSA Rail Cyber Security Directives https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/strengths-and-weaknesses-of-the-new-tsa-rail-cyber-security-directives/ Tue, 22 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/uncategorized/strengths-and-weaknesses-of-the-new-tsa-rail-cyber-security-directives/ The post Strengths and Weaknesses of the New TSA Rail Cyber Security Directives appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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The new TSA Rail Cyber Security Directive 1580/82-2022-01 increases the scope of passenger and freight rail system cyber security protections over the directives issued in 2021. The new rules reflect complexities intrinsic to many rail operators. Parts of the new rules are not so clear, while other parts might have been made even a bit stronger without a material increase in compliance paperwork. It seems likely that the directives are only the first steps in the U.S. government’s efforts to secure the nation’s critical rail infrastructure.


Thumbnail of US Presidential Rail Cyber Security Directive TSA 1580/82-2022-1 Rail Cybersecurity Mitigation Actions and Testing
TSA Security Directive 1580/82-2022-1: Rail Cybersecurity Mitigation Actions and Testing

At the highest levels, the new rules expand the scope of earlier directives. The 2021 directives were focused on incident reporting and incident response capabilities. The new directive expands the scope of required cyber security programs to encompass all five pillars of the NIST Framework. In doing so, the new rules reflect the complexity of trying to require strong security in an industry where many owners and operators have complex interdependencies between their IT and OT systems.

Critical Cyber Systems

The new rules define “Critical Cyber System” as any IT or OT system or data whose compromise could result in operational disruption. While some safety critical systems such as signaling would qualify as an OT System, the definitions of IT and OT systems is more nebulous in other cases:

  • In passenger rail systems, the ticketing systems might be considered critical to continuous operations and ticketing systems are most often hosted on IT networks,
  • In freight systems, container tracking is often critical to on-loading and off-loading and these tracking systems are most often hosted on IT networks, and
  • Cyber security programs at most operators are comparatively immature, and so there tends to be a host of lesser interdependencies between IT and OT networks.

Unlike the North American electric power sector where there is a strong emphasis on separating control-critical from non-critical networks, making such a separation in most rail networks is going to be very difficult, no matter how desirable such separation might be in the long run.

Rail cyber security New York city metro train rolling down some overhead tracks
Rail cyber security

Confusing Rail Cyber Security Elements in the New Directive

Given these interdependencies, it may seem strange that rule III.B in the new directive requires network segmentation “designed to prevent operational disruption to the OT system if the IT system is compromised or vice-versa.” If most physical operations require both IT and OT systems running, what good is independent operation? The answer may be aspirational. If there are no OT dependencies on IT services, strong segmentation, such as with a Unidirectional Gateway, means that physical operations can continue if the Internet-exposed IT network is compromised. Ultimately, if operators can move away from these dependencies, then the reliability and resiliency of the entire system is improved through stronger rail cyber security.

Similarly confusing are III.D rules on spam and phishing emails, restrictions against known C2 Internet addresses, and restrictions against known malicious websites. Common OT security practices already forbid connections from anything on an OT network out to an email server, and similarly forbid connections to anything but known-good IP addresses and web domains – or completely forbid all connections out to the Internet for that matter. The reason here, again, appears to be that these rules apply to “critical systems” and those systems can be found on both IT and OT networks. Worse, critical systems such as passenger ticketing and freight tracking may themselves be exposed to customers through web services, and so may be intrinsically Internet-exposed.

Problematic Elements

The obvious problem with the directives is that they are regulations, and auditable regulations produce a lot of costly paperwork. It is not enough to implement robust security programs to comply with the rules. Given the potential for external audits, robust security programs must now be demonstrably compliant, which means a lot of paperwork and tracking.

A deeper problem stems from requirements in III.C that talk about eliminating shared passwords, MFA, password refreshes and least privilege. The only practical way to implement these policies reliably in an OT network, with thousands or tens of thousands of cooperating systems, is a central password and permission manager, with Active Directory (AD) servers being the elephant in the room. The problem with these systems is that they introduce new single points of compromise and are favorite targets of ransomware criminal groups. By way of contrast, the NERC CIP regulations effectively forbid OT systems from depending on IT AD servers, by flagging AD servers as “electronic access control devices,” which are subject to almost as many CIP rules as are critical cyber systems. Such rules are seen as onerous for IT AD systems, and so in practice, no CIP-compliant enterprise has their OT systems depend on or even trust the IT AD servers.

Another problem reflects the IT/OT spam and Internet-blocking confusion that we looked at a couple paragraphs ago. The directive really should require or encourage owners and operators to set up strong segmentation for all critical rail cyber systems, whether on IT networks or on OT networks, and either forbid outright any connections to the Internet from those critical networks or permit only connections to known-good destinations. Trying to track known-bad IP addresses and domains is a never-ending game of cat and mouse with our adversaries; one eventually doomed to failure if it persists long enough.

Residual Cyber Security Risk

One obvious residual risk here is pivoting paths. Pivoting is when our attackers take control of one machine in one of our networks and then use that machine to attack other machines in other networks. Targeted ransomware actors, hacktivists, and nation-states all use pivoting routinely. All three demonstrate routinely that they can push their attacks through firewalls. There were thousands of ransomware incidents last year, and all of them managed to plant their malware on IT networks through the Internet firewall, didn’t they? Any time there is only firewalled segmentation in place, there are pivoting paths from the Internet, through IT networks, into critical IT systems and OT networks.

Perhaps because of the deep distribution of critical rail systems throughout both IT and OT networks at most operators, the fundamental problem remains that only IT-grade cyber security solutions protect physical operations. The new rules require us to try to detect spam attacks and try to keep up with known-bad Internet destinations. We do this in the “hope” that we can discover and respond to attacks before truly unacceptable consequences are brought about on rail switching systems, the most consequential of our critical systems. The problem here is that “hope” can never pass as an acceptable engineering design practice.

Proper Engineering-Grade Rail Cyber Security

The engineering profession is charged with protecting public safety. Engineering-grade designs do not “hope” that a bridge will carry a specified load for a specified number of decades. Neither should engineering-grade  rail cyber security designs “hope” that adversaries can be prevented from switching tracks maliciously and causing trains to collide. Engineering-grade protections are deterministic in that they always provide the same degree of protection, no matter what kind of cyber attack is thrown at them.

The new TSA directive is a step in the right direction security-wise, but rail system operators can both do better than meet the minimum security requirements. A simultaneously simpler and cheaper design is available that meets the new TSA requirements. For a look at Waterfall’s current recommendation at how to provide simple, predictable, and unbreachable protection for network segmentation, please have a look at our guide: Cyber security Imperatives for Vital Rail Networks at Operational Control Centers.

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Unidirectional Cloud Gateway for Rail | Waterfall & Alstom https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/unidirectional-cloud-gateway-for-rail-waterfall-alstom/ Mon, 21 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/uncategorized/unidirectional-cloud-gateway-for-rail-waterfall-alstom/ Watch as Eddy Thésée, Vice President Cybersecurity at Alstom, and Lior Frenkel, CEO and Co-Founder at Waterfall, discuss the Unidirectional Cloud Gateway, a cloud security gateway product especially useful for the rail industry. This is a solution that solves the cyber security and data privacy concerns when connecting any operational technology environment to the cloud.

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Watch as Eddy Thésée, Vice President Cybersecurity at Alstom, and Lior Frenkel, CEO and Co-Founder at Waterfall, discuss the Unidirectional Cloud Gateway, a cloud security gateway product especially useful for the rail industry. This is a solution that solves the cyber security and data privacy concerns when connecting any operational technology environment to the cloud.

Key points on cloud security gateways

Eddy Thésée points out that “the usage of data within railway is increasing. Because of this usage we are able now to improve the operational efficiency. One of the ways to address the challenge of more data is to use the cloud.” Lior Frenkel adds: “We see a trend of course, going towards using more cloud based systems […] the flip side of that is that they need to connect their operational technology environments to cloud services which creates a lot of cybersecurity concerns and in this case also privacy [concerns].”

Operational efficiency and enhanced passenger experience are two clear focuses for modern rail. Paradoxically the increased connectivity needed to realize these goals exposes railway networks to new and evolving cyber threats. In an infinitely connected modern world, having assurance that operational systems can be protected with an unbreachable cyber security solution might be a surprise to some transport authorities. The Unidirectional Cloud Gateway (a cloud security gateway) for Rail combines impenetrable hardware with unlimited software-based connectivity.

Gateway Testimonials

“The unique and only railway cybersecurity standard that exists today (TS 50701) is recommending the use of these (Unidirectional Cloud) Gateways.”

Eddy Thésée, Vice President Cybersecurity, Alstom

“Waterfall has developed a solution which is specific to connecting operational environments to cloud services taking into consideration both the cybersecurity and privacy, and I think it will help many customers move a bit faster towards more wide spread use of cloud services.”

Lior Frenkel, CEO and Co-Founder, Waterfall

Note that viewers may also find our related use-case publication, Unidirectional Protection for Railway Signalling Networks, very informative.

PR: Waterfall Announces Cybersecurity Partnership With Alstom>>

More about Rails

About Waterfall

Waterfall Security Solutions’ unbreachable OT cybersecurity technologies keep the world running. For more than 15 years, the most important industries and infrastructure have trusted Waterfall to guarantee safe, secure, and reliable operations. The company’s growing list of global customers includes national infrastructures, power plants, nuclear generators, onshore and offshore oil and gas facilities, refineries, manufacturing plants, utility companies, and more. Waterfall’s patented Unidirectional Gateways and other solutions combine the benefits of impenetrable hardware with unlimited software-based connectivity, enabling 100% safe visibility into industrial operations and automation systems.

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A New Cybersecurity Partnership for the Rail Industry | Waterfall & Alstom https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/a-new-cybersecurity-partnership-for-the-rail-industry-waterfall-alstom/ Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/uncategorized/a-new-cybersecurity-partnership-for-the-rail-industry-waterfall-alstom/ Waterfall Security Solutions and Alstom announce a cybersecurity partnership to secure safety-critical and reliability-critical operations networks for railways and public transport.

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Waterfall Security Solutions and Alstom announce a cybersecurity partnership to secure safety-critical and reliability-critical operations networks for railways and public transport.

Alstom is known as the global leader in rolling sock – delivering high speed trains and monorail. Alstom is also globally known for the user end of their mobility products. This has resulted in very connected systems – embedding privacy and cybersecurity in the DNA of Alstom’s products.

Increased Demand for Sharing Operational Data

In the age of increased business demand for sharing of railway operational and signaling system data to non-secure networks, Rail system operators urgently need cybersecurity partnership designs and solutions that can meet the challenge of sharing of information while preventing cyber-attacks. When 100% prevention from online cyber-attacks is required, Waterfall’s Unidirectional Security Gateways are the clear choice.

Waterfall Unidirectional Gateways replace one layer of firewalls in an industrial network environment, providing industrial control systems with absolute protection from targeted attacks, secure enterprise-wide visibility, and safe remote access. The Gateways replicate servers, emulate industrial devices, and translate industrial data to cloud formats, enabling vendor monitoring, industrial cloud services, and visibility into operations for modern enterprises and customers.

Waterfall and Alstom’s Cybersecurity Partnership

Waterfall and Alstom’s cybersecurity partnership is based on a common commitment to increase the security of the railway industry.

“[Waterfall’s] ability to provide physical protection is essential for us”

Eddy Thésée, Vice President Cybersecurity at Alstom

Waterfall has a steadily growing install basis in the rail industry and Alstom, the global leader in smart and green mobility, is already integrating Waterfall’s patented unidirectional gateways in projects.

“Together, we bring to public transport operators Waterfall’s expertise and technologies, which have been proven and applied in other critical infrastructures”

Lior Frenkel, CEO and Co-Founder at Waterfall

PR: Waterfall Announces Cybersecurity Partnership With Alstom>>

New eBook by Waterfall: Cybersecurity Imperatives For Vital Rail Networks At Operation Control Centers>>

More about Rails

About Waterfall

Waterfall Security Solutions’ unbreachable OT cybersecurity technologies keep the world running. For more than 15 years, the most important industries and infrastructure have trusted Waterfall to guarantee safe, secure, and reliable operations. The company’s growing list of global customers includes national infrastructures, power plants, nuclear generators, onshore and offshore oil and gas facilities, refineries, manufacturing plants, utility companies, and more. Waterfall’s patented Unidirectional Gateways and other solutions combine the benefits of impenetrable hardware with unlimited software-based connectivity, enabling 100% safe visibility into industrial operations and automation systems.

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Unidirectional Gateway for the Rail Industry | Waterfall & Alstom https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/transportation/unidirectional-gateway-for-the-rail-industry-waterfall-alstom/ Mon, 07 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/uncategorized/unidirectional-gateway-for-the-rail-industry-waterfall-alstom/ Waterfall Security Solutions, the OT security company, and Alstom, the global leader in smart and green mobility have partnered to provide the rail industry with unbreachable cybersecurity through Waterfall’s Unidirectional Gateway products.

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Waterfall Security Solutions, the OT security company, and Alstom, the global leader in smart and green mobility have partnered to provide the rail industry with unbreachable cybersecurity through Waterfall’s Unidirectional Gateway products.

Rail system digitalization is yielding unprecedented efficiency gains and customer service improvements. Eddy Thésée, VP Cybersecurity at Alstom, explains the consequences of this digitization is resulting in a need to communicate between zones with different levels of security and criticality. Unidirectional gateways are the best way to achieve this communication safely.

“We believe that unidirectional gateways are necessary in public transportation”

Eddy Thésée, VP Cybersecurity, Alstom

Rail Security Standards

Industrial security standards such as IEC 62443 and TS-50701 position unidirectional gateways as superior to firewalls, and thus a better fit for protecting connections between zones with different levels of criticality.

How A Unidirectional Gateway Works

Unidirectional gateways are a plug-n-play solution replacing one layer of firewalls in an industrial network environment, typically between IT and OT environments. Unlike firewalls, Waterfall’s Unidirectional Gateway products are a combination of hardware and software. The hardware is physically able to send information in only one direction: usually from a high-criticality network to a lower-criticality network. The unidirectionality of Waterfall’s Unidirectional Gateways is physically enforced, in the gateway hardware. Customers can be confident of the unidirectionality of Waterfall’s gateways because the products are Common Criteria certified to be unidirectional with a high degree of confidence, even in the face of the most sophisticated nation-state and organized crime attacks possible.

“In the rail industry you are responsible for tens of thousands of lives per day, their safety is the most important thing.”

Lior Frenkel, CEO and Co-founder, Waterfall Security Solutions

Cybersecurity and Safety

Cybersecurity in vital networks is a precondition for safety. Mobility experts at Alstom are providing valuable insights about pain points of rail industry, enabling Waterfall to continually improve and provide the best cybersecurity solutions. Waterfall’s Unidirectional Gateways and surrounding suite of products allow Alstom and the rail industry to reap the benefits of digitization, without endangering critical operation networks.

PR: Waterfall Announces Cybersecurity Partnership With Alstom>>

New eBook by Waterfall: Cybersecurity Imperatives For Vital Rail Networks At Operation Control Centers>>

More about Rails

The post Unidirectional Gateway for the Rail Industry | Waterfall & Alstom appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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