upstream – Waterfall Security Solutions https://waterfall-security.com Unbreachable OT security, unlimited OT connectivity Tue, 25 Nov 2025 07:47:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://waterfall-security.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/cropped-favicon2-2-32x32.png upstream – Waterfall Security Solutions https://waterfall-security.com 32 32 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.”

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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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Upstream / Midstream / Downstream Cyber Attacks – Dependency Analysis https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/oil-gas/upstream-midstream-downstream-cyber-attacks-dependency-analysis/ Tue, 09 Jul 2024 06:31:40 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=24779 It turns out that there are really only three ways that ransomware can shut down OT networks and physical operations: "abundance of caution" shutdowns, OT dependencies on IT systems and services, and ransomware impacting OT networks and systems directly.

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Upstream / Midstream / Downstream Cyber Attacks – Dependency Analysis

It turns out that there are really only three ways that ransomware can shut down OT networks and physical operations: "abundance of caution" shutdowns, OT dependencies on IT systems and services, and ransomware impacting OT networks and systems directly.
Picture of Andrew Ginter

Andrew Ginter

Oil and Gas protection against ransomware

“…there is little benefit in having the world’s strongest OT security program if we must shut down our operation every time the IT network is compromised…”

The Waterfall / ICS Strive 2024 Threat Report lists a handful of serious cyber attacks impacting the performance of oil & gas infrastructure in the last several years, including the Colonial Pipeline shutdown and halted shipments at three ports / oil terminals. Most of these incidents were due to ransomware, and most of that ransomware impacted the IT network. It turns out that there are really only three ways that ransomware can shut down OT networks and physical operations: “abundance of caution” shutdowns, OT dependencies on IT systems and services, and ransomware impacting OT networks and systems directly.

In today’s article we look at dependencies. In short, there is little benefit in having the world’s strongest OT security program if we must shut down our operation every time the IT network is compromised with ransomware, because our operations depend on IT services. For example:

  • Upstream production might depend on a functioning IT-based royalty reporting system,

     

  • Midstream operations might depend on a functioning IT custody transfer system, and

     

  • Downstream refining might depend on a functioning IT-based emissions reporting system.

     

These kinds of dependencies are called out explicitly in the US TSA Security Directive 2021-02D for pipeline operators. In particular, the directives establish requirements for the nation’s most important pipelines. For critical OT systems, owners and operators must:

  • Implement segmentation designed to prevent operational disruption to OT systems if IT systems are compromised,

     

  • In support of that goal, identify all OT dependencies on IT services,

     

  • Design OT networks so that they can be isolated from IT networks during incident response procedures.

     

While not stated explicitly in the security directives, the ability to separate OT and IT networks in an emergency can enable OT systems to continue operating through an IT emergency, but only if OT dependencies on IT networks and OT trusts of crippled IT domains do not impair that very desirable ability to operate independently.

If we wish to operate our OT systems through an IT security incident, then while it can be very difficult to eliminate all OT dependencies on IT systems, we cannot simply ignore those dependencies that remain. Instead, we must recognize that IT systems that are essential to continued physical operations are in fact reliability-critical components. These reliability-critical systems may be hosted on what we think of as the IT network instead of the OT network but must be managed and secured as if they were OT systems. For example:

  • If a pipeline depends on a custody transfer and billing system in IT, we could modify our customer contracts so that if we must declare force majeure, custody transfer billing enters an “approximation” mode. The OT system continues operating the pipeline, caching all billing-relevant data in a historian or other repository until the billing system recovers and can reconcile accounts.

     

  • If an upstream producer depends on a royalty reporting system in IT, we could (hopefully, beforehand) negotiate with the royalty administrator so that, again, if we must declare force majeure, royalty payments could enter an approximation mode, with manual payments authorized every day or two based on approximate data. The OT systems again cache all royalty-relevant data in a historian until the payment system recovers.

     

  • For refining emissions data we do the same, but there are no payments or monies to track, simply emissions data to track in a force majeure condition.

     

In all three cases, what we are seeing here is not only two kinds of network criticality, a safety-critical OT network and a business-critical IT network, but three networks. The third is a reliability-critical network that is often mixed up with other IT assets. In the examples above, we might be able to redesign our systems so that custody transfer, royalty payments and emissions reporting can, in an emergency, be seen as non-critical. More generally, such redesign may not be possible. In this case, what we need to do is recognize that we are dealing with three network criticalities and start applying some of the TSA approach to managing the OT-critical components in the IT network.

Oil pipesFor example – consider the upstream royalty payment system. To be effective in managing the royalty system as reliability-critical, we need to put the royalty system in its own network/DMZ and apply the TSA approach to that network as well – be wary of allowing the royalty network to rely on IT resources that may be compromised, be wary of sharing trusts between the reliability-critical DMZ and the IT network, and so on. It does no good to restore the reliability-critical systems to an uncompromised state if they, in turn, still depend on Active Directory or other IT services that are still crippled by the ransomware attack.

The word “resilience” is often used when looking at these dependencies between safety-critical and reliability-critical networks. In the royalty example, we might deploy unidirectional gateways at the IT/OT interfaces in the offshore platforms or oil fields to prevent any online attack from migrating from a compromised IT network into the safety-critical OT networks. If the IT network is compromised though, we must still shut down the production of hydrocarbons when the royalty system fails. But – if we can bring the royalty reporting system back within hours of failure, and we can bring the field back into full production an hour or two after that, then the result might be regarded as an acceptable worst-case outage of only a few hours.

This kind of network engineering is an example of enabling resilience – production “springs back” into operation after a brief outage, even while the bulk of the IT network is still compromised. Be aware though – while this kind of reliability-critical dependency analysis can result in improved resilience, it is not always a “silver bullet.” A petrochemical refinery for example, can take days or longer to go from an emergency stop condition back to 100% of capacity. Any IT dependency that triggers even a five-minute complete shutdown of such a facility incurs this start-up cost of losing days or more of production. Applying network engineering principles to reliability-critical IT sub-networks can save us a lot of downtime in some cases, but we must still consider the realities of the physical process. 

Further reading:

This example is a small part of Chapter 5 of the author’s new book Engineering-Grade OT Security – A manager’s guide. If you found value in this article, you can request your own free copy of the book here, courtesy of Waterfall Security Solutions.

About the author
Picture of Andrew Ginter

Andrew Ginter

Andrew Ginter is the most widely-read author in the industrial security space, with over 35,000 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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Recorded Webinar: Cyber-Informed Engineering Transforms IT/OT Convergence in Oil & Gas Operations https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/oil-gas/recorded-webinar-cyber-informed-engineering-transforms-it-ot-convergence-in-oil-gas-operations/ Mon, 04 Mar 2024 10:42:38 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=20490 Webinar recording of Kevin Rittie, Andrew Ginter, and Alan Acquatella introducing a new approach for solving the long standing challenge of safely and securely converging IT and OT networks in an Oil & Gas operation.

The post Recorded Webinar: Cyber-Informed Engineering Transforms IT/OT Convergence in Oil & Gas Operations appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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Recorded Webinar: Cyber-Informed Engineering Transforms IT/OT Convergence in Oil & Gas Operations

Webinar recording of Kevin Rittie, Andrew Ginter, and Alan Acquatella introducing a new approach for solving the long standing challenge of safely and securely converging IT and OT networks in an Oil & Gas operation.

Picture of Waterfall team

Waterfall team

Webinar Recording OT/IT with CIE

Integrating OT with IT introduces new threats to the reliability of existing operations. Connected networks move more than just vital data, they also move malware, and remote-control cyber attacks along their wires and cables. In the Oil & Gas industry, E&P, pipelines, and refineries have found that securing IT/OT connections involves more than just having Enterprise Security telling Engineering what to do and Engineering saying “no” to IT over and over. 

However, understanding what “more” means has been the challenge.

Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) is a new approach to securing IT/OT convergence – an approach and a perspective that highlights important opportunities. For example, in CIE, worst-case consequences define security requirements for industrial networks, and consequence boundaries define unique spheres of expertise and approaches, including safety engineering, process engineering, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and leveraging industrial data in the cloud.

 

In this webinar Kevin Rittie, Andrew Ginter, and Alan Acquatella covered some important points:

arrow red right The challenges facing OT engineering as it strives to build secure bridges between operations, corporate, and the cloud in order to satisfy the ever growing need for operational data that drives strategic business growth.

arrow red right CIE and how this approach of secure-by-design engineering can improve the security and operational integrity of both brownfield and greenfield installations.

arrow red right Practical examples of cyber-informed engineering and unidirectional networks combining to build safe and secure production environments.

Towards the end of the webinar, we answered some of the listeners questions and provided a list of some tangible next steps that you can take on your continuous cybersecurity journey.

Watch Now:

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Adding Industrial Connectivity Without Adding Cyber Risk https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/oil-gas/adding-industrial-connectivity-without-adding-cyber-risk/ Mon, 19 Feb 2024 12:47:32 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=19847 The post Adding Industrial Connectivity Without Adding Cyber Risk appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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Adding Industrial Connectivity Without Adding Cyber Risk

Unidirectional gateways are used to secure connectivity to industrial networks that serve as the lifeblood for analytics data used to optimize Oil & Gas production operations.
Picture of Kevin J. Rittie

Kevin J. Rittie

Industrial Connectivity without cyber risk

Analyzing data followed by optimizing a process with the goal of increasing efficiency is an accepted formula that can be applied to nearly any industry. When it comes to large industrial processes, the collection of such data (for analysis) has grown significantly–and continues to grow–while the drive for increased optimization and higher efficiencies is ever more desired.   

With the recent advent of IIoT, Industry 4.0, Cloud-based analytical services, and 3rd party vendors, all of which use the internet and corporate intranets to transmit and export data, new attack vectors are continuously arising. The common architectural IP-based pathway at the core of all integration presents a most attractive attack surface to those with less than good intentions. Many IIoT are configured in a way that directly violates the Purdue model’s “defense in depth”. However, the data provided by these devices and their sensors is critical to the economic viability of the operations.  Therefore, securing them is not just an option to be considered, but a requirement. 

“Many IIoT are configured in a way that directly violates the Purdue model’s “defense in depth”. However, the data provided by these devices and their sensors is critical to the economic viability of the operations.” 

Must-have Connectivity

Despite the risks that these devices and their connectivity pose, most of this integration is vital in making the operation economically feasible. If solutions and networks can be maintained to run for 25 years, created with connected devices that alert for preventative maintenance, then having the machines break down after 10 years while running in isolation and not taking advantage of efficiencies that extend operational lives is no longer an acceptable business option. As connected operations deliver higher efficiencies through better maintenance of production machinery, the more the demand for connectivity will grow. 

The Risk of Ransomware

While the benefits of these connected sensors and devices have a clear upside, there is a risky downside. One glaringly common threat is that of ransomware. The fear is that someone may: 

  • Exploit the integration and knowledge gains made possible by connected devices to establish a foothold in the industrial network…

     

  • From there, move laterally, escalate privileges, and eventually encrypt the contents of the entire industrial network…

     

  • Thereby impacting operations and possibly causing significant societal impacts.  

 

The attackers then contact the owners and offer the encryption key for a ransom. Usually millions of dollars. And there is no guarantee that the encryption key ransomed will actually unlock your data. There is no ransomware support to contact if everything doesn’t go back to normal after the ransom payment—you effectively start over with backups and fresh systems. 

There are dozens of other cyber threats besides ransomware. Protecting against all of them is as important as protecting against only one of them. 

Protecting OT Connectivity

When it comes to protecting IT networks, the main concern is that someone will exfiltrate sensitive information. When it comes to protecting OT networks, the main concern is that someone will insert malicious code into the network or a device, which will cause it to simply stop working, or worse, violently stop working in a way that endangers the lives of the surrounding workers. As such, while IT security is heavily focused on protecting anything from leaking OUT, OT security is heavily focused on making sure nothing gets IN. 

The Solution: Unidirectionality

The connectivity requirements for industrial systems help operational data travel to where it needs to go to be analyzed, be it the cloud, a third-party vendor’s servers, or the OEM of an IIoT device. While this connectivity is critical for operations and maintaining efficiency, it is mainly the incoming connectivity that poses all the risks, and the outbound connectivity that provides all the benefits. The Solution: Unidirectionality. Waterfall’s unidirectional gateways and other solutions replicate the OT system’s servers, updating them in real time using a unidirectional connection that lets the data flow outward. If anything tries to flow into the OT network, it can’t. The physical hardware is designed to literally be missing those components, making it impossible to breach the OT network, ensuring that it remains 100% unbreachable.  

When the analytical servers on the cloud, the third-party vendors, or the IIoT device needs to send a request for pulling the data, it sends the request to the replica of the OT system’s server that sits on the Waterfall unidirectional gateway. If a threat actor attempted to hack into the OT network, they would be hacking into an inert replica that only provides copies while not allowing for any access to any of the controls.  

Embracing the OT Digital Transformation

As industries embrace the era of digital transformation and rely more on interconnected systems for operational efficiency, the need for robust cybersecurity measures grows in importance. While the benefits of connected sensors and devices are undeniable, the looming threat of cyberattacks underscores the importance of safeguarding industrial networks. Unidirectional gateways offer a compelling solution by enabling outbound data flow for analysis while ensuring that no incoming connections compromise the integrity of the operational technology (OT) network. By implementing such measures, industries can strike a balance between connectivity and security, safeguarding their critical infrastructure and optimizing Oil & Gas production operations without adding additional cyber risks.  

About the author
Picture of Kevin J. Rittie

Kevin J. Rittie

With over 30 years in the control system market, Kevin Rittie is a seasoned software and cybersecurity professional who has led diverse development groups with budgets up to $10M. He has a comprehensive background, starting as a project engineer and software developer, and has excelled in roles such as Product Management, Cybersecurity, Sales, and Marketing. Kevin's innovative contributions include leading the design of a patented control visualization architecture and driving the development of energy management solutions, culminating in the establishment of his own business, RevelationSCS, focused on change management, software practices, and securing critical infrastructure.
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Checklist: 9 Best Practices to Safeguard Upstream Oil & Gas Operations from Cyber Attacks https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/oil-gas/checklist-9-best-practices-to-safeguard-upstream-oil-gas-operations-from-cyber-attacks/ Wed, 14 Feb 2024 12:02:50 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=19269 Upstream Oil & Gas production has a unique range of threats and risks to consider when compared to other industrial operations.

Our checklist infographic takes a dive into what to consider and secure when it comes to Upstream operations.

The post Checklist: 9 Best Practices to Safeguard Upstream Oil & Gas Operations from Cyber Attacks appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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Checklist: 9 Best Practices to Safeguard Upstream Oil & Gas Operations from Cyber Attacks

Checklist: 9 Best Practices to Safeguard Upstream Oil & Gas Operations from Cyber Attacks

Upstream Oil & Gas production has a unique range of threats and risks to consider when compared to other industrial operations.

Our checklist infographic takes a dive into what to consider and secure when it comes to Upstream operations.

Some highlights of what is covered:

arrow red right  CIE and IT Best Practices that apply to upstream and cyberattacks preparedness.

arrow red right  Onsite security, personnel security, and employe training that goes a long way.

arrow red right Protecting against remote threats without restricting outside connectivity

Download our infographic checklist to make sure that you’ve covered all your bases in securing your upstream operations.

About the author
Picture of Kevin J. Rittie

Kevin J. Rittie

With over 30 years in the control system market, Kevin Rittie is a seasoned software and cybersecurity professional who has led diverse development groups with budgets up to $10M. He has a comprehensive background, starting as a project engineer and software developer, and has excelled in roles such as Product Management, Cybersecurity, Sales, and Marketing. Kevin's innovative contributions include leading the design of a patented control visualization architecture and driving the development of energy management solutions, culminating in the establishment of his own business, RevelationSCS, focused on change management, software practices, and securing critical infrastructure.
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How to Properly Cyber Secure an Upstream Oil & Gas Operation https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/oil-gas/how-to-properly-cyber-secure-an-upstream-oil-gas-operation/ Tue, 13 Feb 2024 10:27:02 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=19276 The Waterfall Unidirectional Security Gateway and how it has been applied at Oil & Gas production sites such as oil fields and offshore platforms.

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How to Properly Cyber Secure an Upstream Oil & Gas Operation

The Waterfall Unidirectional Security Gateway and how it has been applied at Oil & Gas production sites such as oil fields and offshore platforms.
Picture of Kevin J. Rittie

Kevin J. Rittie

How to Properly Cyber Secure an Upstream Oil & Gas Operation

Protecting an Upstream Oil & Gas operation from cyber threats can be significantly challenging. Unlike many other industrial processes, any disruption to Upstream production has a potentially broad ripple effect, possibly impacting Midstream, Downstream, and even the entire supply chain that uses those petroleum products to provide society with its goods, services, and of course, the fuel with which to deliver them. 

Emerging technologies are making the task even more complex, for example, the use of IIoT has grown significantly over the past half-decade, requiring many points of external cloud connectivity that completely bypass important boundaries put in place by the Purdue Model, a commonly followed OT security framework. As this outside connectivity is used to fine-tune and optimize operations, organizations become dependent on this data’s derivative value, making it a requirement and no longer a nice to have. While there are traditional methods to control the flow of data from this class of devices, a unidirectional configuration can provide you guaranteed secure exchange with low maintenance needs. The data that the IIoT device sends out may not be sensitive, but the machine from which it is collecting that information could be highly sensitive. Therefore, the main goal is protecting the sensitive machine, not the non-sensitive data.  

“The data that the IIoT device sends out may not be sensitive, but the machine from which it is collecting that information could be highly sensitive.”

TSA Directive for Midstream—Is an equivalent coming to Upstream?

When the Colonial Pipeline cyber incident occurred, there were no formal regulations or laws geared toward preventing such occurrences. Within less than a year, initial regulations were established with updates and refinements garnered from the industry and from acknowledged best practices in an effort to prevent a repeat. The Upstream sector is currently not cyber-regulated, as (knock on wood) there haven’t been any overtly public cyber incidents targeting an Upstream operation, that is, a bellwether event similar to Colonial Pipeline. 

However, if such an Upstream incident were to occur, it could rapidly change the regulatory landscape. Even sans a cyber event, regulators and critical infrastructure oversight agencies are keen to prevent the lurking menace of an attack that could happen due to a lack of assurances that regulations can provide. This is the reason it makes sense for Upstream operations to ensure that its cybersecurity processes demonstrably leverage industry best practices used across many diverse industries, not just oil and gas.  This proactive behavior could reduce the need for regulations as well as provide society and oversight agencies with assurance that the Upstream industry is doing all that it can do to ensure safe, secure, environmentally sound, and uninterrupted operations across the entire segment. 

No one likes the risk of new regulations, and there’s a concern that those imposing these regulations are not fully familiar with the systems they are tasked with protecting, nor do they fully understand the threats against that which they are protecting. Waterfall provides a very high level of security to protect operations. As a side benefit, most regulations and compliances are fully met by using Waterfall’s Unidirectional Gateways. There are even aspects of certain regulations that have network areas exempt from certain details of compliance if those network areas are behind a Waterfall Unidirectional Gateway. 

The Best of Best Practices

Because of the sensitive nature of all Oil & Gas operations, the best-of-the-best practices make the most sense for securing these operations. When it comes to the best practice of protecting an industrial network from external threats while still maintaining external connectivity, the best-of-the-best practice is to use a Waterfall Unidirectional Gateway. This provides a safe and secure way to connect the OT network(s) to the IT network, protecting the connectivity used for the flow of operational data that needs to be analyzed to ensure optimized operation, as well as for IIoT devices that need to connect with their vendors or to the cloud for advanced analytics. 

One Way - Do Not Enter

ONE WAY street signWaterfall’s Unidirectional Gateway (UDG) is like a one-way street or a one-way valve, but for data. The UDG flawlessly lets data flow out, but it doesn’t let even a “drop” flow back into the industrial network. The technical details are of course more complex than a valve or a one-way street sign, but the concept is fundamentally the same, thereby providing a physical barrier that prevents data from ever flowing back in, no matter how capable the threat actor.  
 
Unlike IT security where our concern is that information will leak out, the threat with industrial connectivity is that a malicious payload will get INTO the system and cause damage or disruptions. By physically ensuring that nothing can remotely enter the system, unidirectional gateways protect against all such threats and risks. 

Industrial Connectivity with a Chance of Cloud

Many of the leading analytical products used to optimize industrial operations are based “in the cloud” and require uninterrupted connectivity from the industrial asset to the cloud. Leading cloud providers such as AWS recommend deploying unidirectional gateways to secure such cloud connectivity. By restricting the directionality of the data flow, we can establish secure connections to external and untrusted networks, including those that provide cloud-based services. If that cloud-based service or the cloud infrastructure itself was to be cyber compromised, the industrial network that is protected by a unidirectional gateway would remain physically unreachable and unbreachable.  

Protecting Upstream Oil & Gas Operations

Safeguarding upstream Oil & Gas operations against cyber threats requires proactive measures and the adoption of robust security solutions. As the industry grapples with the challenges posed by emerging technologies like IIoT and external cloud connectivity, the Waterfall Unidirectional Gateway emerges as a best-of-the-best practice for securing industrial networks. By providing a physical barrier that allows data to flow out but preventing any return flow, this solution not only aligns with industry compliance requirements, but also safeguards the network ensuring continuous operations while protecting against potential disruptions. As the threat landscape evolves, proactive implementation of such measures not only enhances security and complies with potential future regulations, but also demonstrates a commitment to safety and the resilience we’ve grown to expect as a society from critical infrastructure. 

About the author
Picture of Kevin J. Rittie

Kevin J. Rittie

With over 30 years in the control system market, Kevin Rittie is a seasoned software and cybersecurity professional who has led diverse development groups with budgets up to $10M. He has a comprehensive background, starting as a project engineer and software developer, and has excelled in roles such as Product Management, Cybersecurity, Sales, and Marketing. Kevin's innovative contributions include leading the design of a patented control visualization architecture and driving the development of energy management solutions, culminating in the establishment of his own business, RevelationSCS, focused on change management, software practices, and securing critical infrastructure.
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Cyber-Informed Engineering Transforms IT/OT Convergence in Oil & Gas Operations https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/oil-gas/cyber-informed-engineering-transforms-it-ot-convergence-in-oil-gas-operations/ Thu, 01 Feb 2024 08:17:43 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=18459 IT/OT integration introduces threats to reliable operations. Connected networks move both data, malware, and remote-control cyber attacks along their wires and cables. In the Oil & Gas industry, E&P, pipelines, and refineries have found that securing IT/OT connections involves more than just having Enterprise Security telling Engineering what to do and Engineering saying “no” to IT over and over.

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Cyber-Informed Engineering Transforms IT/OT Convergence in Oil & Gas Operations

Join our webinar for an in-depth look at how CIE (Cyber-Informed Engineering) can help in converging IT and OT security for Oil & Gas operations.

Join us on February 28th or 29th 2024.
There will be 2 live streams of the webinar, please pick the date and time that works best for you.

Oil & Gas Webinar

On this webinar, we'll take you through:

IT/OT integration introduces threats to reliable operations. Connected networks move both data, malware, and remote-control cyber attacks along their wires and cables. In the Oil & Gas industry, E&P, pipelines, and refineries have found that securing IT/OT connections involves more than just having Enterprise Security telling Engineering what to do and Engineering saying “no” to IT over and over. 

However, understanding what “more” means has been the challenge.

Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) is a new approach to securing IT/OT convergence – an approach and a perspective that highlights important opportunities. For example, in CIE, worst-case consequences define security requirements for industrial networks, and consequence boundaries define unique spheres of expertise and approaches, including safety engineering, process engineering, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and leveraging industrial data in the cloud.

Join Kevin Rittie, Andrew Ginter, and Alan Acquatella in this webinar as they introduce a new approach to solving long standing challenges by:

arrow red right Identifying the challenges facing OT engineering as it strives to build secure bridges between operations, corporate, and the cloud in order to satisfy the ever growing need for operational data that drives strategic business growth.  

arrow red right Introducing CIE in a way that it is clear how this approach to secure-by-design engineering can improve the security and operational integrity of both brownfield and greenfield installations.

arrow red right Looking at some practical examples that make tangible how cyber-informed engineering and unidirectional network engineering combine to build safe and secure production environments.

arrow red right Listing some tangible next steps on your continuous cybersecurity journey.

Picture of Kevin Rittie, a Critical Infrastructure Technology Consultant

Kevin Rittie, a Critical Infrastructure Technology Consultant

With over 30 years in the control system market, Kevin Rittie is a seasoned software and cybersecurity professional who has led diverse development groups with budgets up to $10M. He has a comprehensive background, starting as a project engineer and software developer, and has excelled in roles such as Product Management, Cybersecurity, Sales, and Marketing.

Picture of Andrew Ginter, Waterfall VP Industrial Security

Andrew Ginter, Waterfall VP Industrial Security

Andrew Ginter is the most widely-read author in the industrial security space, with over 20,000 copies of his first two 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.

Picture of Alan Acquatella, Industry Expert at Schneider Electric

Alan Acquatella, Industry Expert at Schneider Electric

Alan Acquatella heads the Pipeline & New Energies Infrastructure Segment for Schneider Electric. He brings domain expertise about industry and customer requirements and provides thought leadership and knowledge on valuable technologies and services customers can use to improve their operations and sustainability efforts.

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Enabling The Digital Refinery https://waterfall-security.com/ot-insights-center/oil-gas/enabling-the-digital-refinery/ Thu, 08 Sep 2022 10:59:00 +0000 https://waterfall-security.com/?p=10502 Protecting critical equipment of a highly sensitive petrochemicals processing plant, while improving production performance with real-time, actionable, and predictive analytics.

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Enabling The Digital Refinery

Protecting The Refining & Petrochemical Industry From Evolving Cyber Threats
Enabling The Digital Refinery
Customer/ Partner:

North American Petrochemical Refinery.

Customer Requirement:

To protect critical equipment and on-going productivity of a highly sensitive production environment involving the processing of petrochemicals, while at the same time improve the performance of plant production with real-time, actionable and predictive analytics.

Waterfall’s Unidirectional Solution:

Secure the production environment perimeter from external threats and provide real-time enterprise visibility – Unidirectional Security Gateways protect all industrial control systems (DCS, individual controllers and logic controllers) with an impassable physical barrier to external network threats, while enabling enterprise access to real-time production data.

Refining & Petrochemicals Processing Modernization And Containing Remote Cyber Threats

The energy industry has become the second most prone to cyber attacks with nearly three-quarters of U.S. oil & gas companies experiencing at least one cyber incident. Remote cyber attacks on oil and gas refining & production can result in severe consequences to human and environmental safety in the form of ruptures, explosions, fires, releases, and spills. In addition, disruption of service and deliverability can be devastating for key infrastructure end users such as power plants, airports or national defense.

The Challenge icon
The challenge

To secure the safe, reliable and continuous operation of oil & gas processing control and safety networks from threats emanating from less trusted external networks. At the same time provide real-time access to operations data to the enterprise users and applications, as well as provide periodic and on-demand inbound access for anti-virus and other updates to turbine vendors and other third parties.

Waterfall solution - icon
Waterfall solution

A Waterfall Unidirectional Gateway was installed between the process control network (PCN) and the enterprise network. Unidirectional Gateway software connectors replicate OSISoft PI, GE OSM and ICCP servers from the PCN to the enterprise network where enterprise clients can interact normally and bi-directionally with the replicas. A file server replication connector was also deployed, to eliminate the routine use of USB drives and other removable media. A Waterfall FLIP, a hardware-enforced Unidirectional Security Gateway whose orientation is reversible, was also installed between the PCN and IT networks. By schedule, or by exception, an independent control mechanism inside the protected OT network triggers the FLIP hardware to change orientation, allowing information to flow back into the protected OT network as needed.

Results and benefits - icon
Results & benefits
  • 100% Security: With the gateways, the PCN is now physically protected from threats emanating from external, less-trusted networks. The FLIP permits disciplined, on-demand and scheduled updates of plant systems, without introducing firewall vulnerabilities.
  • 100% Visibility: The enterprise network continues to operate as if nothing has changed. Instead of accessing servers on the critical operational network, users on the external network now access real-time data from replicated servers for all informational and analytical requirements.
  • 100% Compliance: Unidirectional Gateways are recognized manufacturing cyber security standards as well as by global industrial control system cyber security standards and regulations.
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Theory of Operation
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Waterfall Unidirectional Security Gateways replace firewalls in industrial network environments, providing absolute protection to control systems and operations networks from attacks originating on external networks. The Gateways enable vendor monitoring, industrial cloud services, and visibility into operations for modern enterprises and customers. Unidirectional Gateways replicate servers, emulate industrial devices and translate industrial data to cloud formats. As a result, Unidirectional Gateway technology represents a plug-andplay replacement for firewalls, without the vulnerabilities and maintenance issues that always accompany firewall deployments. Unidirectional Gateways contain both hardware and software components. The hardware components include a TX Module, containing a fiber-optic transmitter/ laser, and an RX Module, containing an optical receiver, but no laser. The gateway hardware can transmit information from an industrial network to an external network, but is physically incapable of propagating any virus, DOS attack, human error or any cyber attack at all back into the protected network.

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Unidirectional Security Gateways Benefits

arrow red rightSafe, continuous monitoring of critical systems

arrow red rightProtects product quality, safety of personnel, property and the environment

arrow red rightProtects safety and preventative maintenance systems of physical assets from remote Internet-based threats

arrow red rightSimplifies audits, change reviews, and security system documentation

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Disciplined, on-demand and scheduled updates of plant systems, without introducing firewall vulnerabilities

arrow red rightReplaces at least one layer of firewalls in a defense-in-depth architecture thereby breaking the chain of infection and pivoting attacks

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Global Cybersecurity Standards Recommend Unidirectional Security Gateways

Waterfall Security is the market leader in Unidirectional Gateway technology with installations at critical infrastructure sites across the globe. The enhanced level of protection provided by Waterfall’s Unidirectional Security Gateway technology is recognized as best practice by many leading industry standards bodies such as NIST, ANSSI, NERC, the IEC, the US DHS, ENISA and may more.

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The post Enabling The Digital Refinery appeared first on Waterfall Security Solutions.

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