Protecting your Operational Technology (OT) environment with the right security solutions is extremely important in today’s digital society. The risks of being hit by a serious attack are constantly increasing and the consequences can be huge, both for the business and for society. But how do you protect yourself against cyberattacks and what security solutions are needed? Read on and learn what steps you need to take to enhance your OT security and protect your critical information.
What is OT security and why is it important?
Operational Technology (OT) is a concept that includes all the subsystems needed to control and monitor a physical process, for example a power plant or a factory. Today, OT mostly consists of programmable control systems (PLCs) and measuring data collection and control systems (SCADA). The term IT, on the other hand, refers to the business and office-related systems that most organisations use.
OT security is about security and reliability for physical processes and systems, where availability and security are often prioritised over data privacy. This is in contrast to IT security which is primarily focused on protecting data, ensuring confidentiality, integrity and availability of information.
Historically, OT systems have often been completely disconnected from the outside world. With the digitalisation of society, the need to connect OT with the outside world has increased. IT and OT are therefore connected, and often the same type of technology is used in IT and OT. However, the different needs within IT and OT easily lead to technical conflicts that can be challenging to manage.
In addition, OT security is often neglected compared to IT security and the conditions are radically different from what most IT operations are used to. There is almost always older but critical equipment combined with restrictions on how to change the facility. You have to have a different approach and manage risks in ways that may be unfamiliar. In addition, there are often direct connections to risks to human life or environmental impact, which causes the risk analysis to be very different.
Threats to critical infrastructure and OT are increasing
Critical infrastructure, such as electricity distribution, water supply, transport and telecommunications, is today dependent on IT systems to control and monitor the processes that form the basis of these operations. Industrial control systems such as ICS (Industrial Control System) or SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) are therefore crucial for our modern society to function. These functions can be collection and processing of measurement data, log management, management of control units and sensors, invoicing in real time, etc.
Managing support remotely means lower costs and improves efficiency. But it also leaves the business more open to information leaks and cyberattacks, which can have devastating effects.
In the industrial sector, ransomware attacks are the most common form of attack affecting operations. Threat actors can use many approaches to disrupt OT systems, including:
- Malware of various kinds
- Attacks that spread from IT to OT systems
- Force operators to shut down OT infrastructure to reduce the risk of spreading to or within the OT network
- Exfiltration of sensitive information about the OT system
There are many reasons why attackers will continue to target OT systems. Among other things, it may be that:
- OT systems continue to be interconnected with other systems (eg IT systems, the cloud and various subcontractors), increasing the chances for attackers to enter OT via these other systems
- There may be a greater risk of organisations paying ransoms to make critical systems available again
ENISA recommends that organisations with OT systems deal with the most common problems in OT, such as insufficient network segmentation, remote access to OT and shared user accounts.
Cyberattacks can have very large consequences for you OT security
Being exposed to a cyberattack can have very big consequences for the affected company/organisation:
- Major productivity losses as the attack can cause interruptions and production stops. The attack can also mean a more lasting deterioration in productivity and quality.
- Leakage or even loss of information. Intangible assets are at risk of being stolen.
- The trust and reputation of the company can be seriously damaged, which can lead to difficulties in getting new customers in the future but also difficulties in getting financing.
- Significant costs can arise in connection with the attack, including paying external service providers for forensic investigations and recovering down computers, but also for extra work internally to resolve the situation. It can also entail costs if you as a company do not meet various requirements, in the form of, for example, laws and regulations, which are placed on the business.
- There is a risk that the company will be forced to shut down the entire operation, at least temporarily, which for a lot of businesses that are based on being constantly in operation is a serious threat.
The question is how to protect information in operations within critical infrastructure? How do you protect your business from threats, while remaining efficient and able to continue to guarantee a certain expected uptime?
What are the regulatory requirements and standards for OT security?
IEC 62443 is a standard you who work with security within ICS systems should know. The purpose of the standard is to improve the integrity, availability and confidentiality of the components. The standard also specifies criteria that can govern how to implement secure systems and consists of four parts: general, policies and procedures, system and component. Broadly speaking, it can be said that the standard concerns requirements and processes for security within ICS systems.
Among other things, it is mentioned that users must be authenticated before they gain access to the system (which may seem obvious) and that they must be given the right level of rights, as well as that their activities must be monitored.
It must also be ensured that the systems cannot be manipulated or that the type of information contained in the systems cannot be revealed without permission. Another aspect is that the availability of the systems’ important functions must be ensured, which in other words is called resilience. The systems must also be divided into zones and the data flow between these zones must be limited.
It is of great importance that there is a system for incidents, so-called incident management. Violations must therefore be reported to the right authority and it must also be ensured that measures are taken to deal with the violation.
Read more about IEC62443 and what you who want to fulfill it need to think about.
How to protect your business against cyberattacks
Unfortunately, there is no one-time formula that allows you to fully protect yourself against all cyberattacks. But there is much you can do to prevent it from happening, but also ways to reduce the damage of an attack.
To begin with, every company or organisation must identify the information or systems that are most critical and thus worth protecting. Since most systems today are interconnected, it is difficult to get an overview of how many paths lead to the most valuable information. By conducting a risk and vulnerability analysis, protectworhty information and systems can be classified and loopholes identified.
However, it is not practical or financially justified to protect all information in the same way. To secure the most valuable information, strict network segmentation is the best solution to use. This means that you create zones with different security levels.
After creating zones, you should choose security solutions for operation, availability, and adaptability based on the attacker’s perspective and worst-case scenario. To be able to protect your most critical information, be sure to use professional solutions for high security and also solutions that are future-proof. Some such solutions are data diodes, security gateways and vpn-crypto solutions. Read more about them further down.
To protect yourself and your business against cyber attacks, you can use these four concrete tips:
- Create a good security culture
- Segment your networks
- Make demands on your subcontractors
- Update securely
Read more about these tips for security.
When you then create your OT security strategy, you should make sure to include the following elements:
- Asset Management: Maintain an accurate inventory of all OT assets.
- Risk Management: Implement a robust risk management process.
- Incident Response Plan: Develop and regularly test an incident response plan tailored to OT.
- Continuous monitoring: Implement continuous monitoring and anomaly detection systems.
- Physical Security: Ensure physical security measures are in place to protect OT assets.
How you make a secure IT/OT integration according to IEC 62443
According to the IEC 62443 standard, you need to take the following 5 steps to secure your IT/OT integration:
- Identify the system
- Initial risk analysis
- Zoning and data flows
- Detailed risk analysis
- Design
Read more in our blog and our guide 5 steps for secure IT/OT-integration as well as our Use case – Securing information flows in an IT/OT environment!
All you can do if you have a secure IT/OT integration
There are several things you can do once you have secured your IT/OT integration:
- Connect the OT environment to the cloud
- Make AI analysis of production data
- Continue your digitalisation journey
- Send highly classified information over the Internet
Read more about all you can do!
Different types of cybersecurity products for enhanced OT security
There are a number of products that can strengthen your cybersecurity, but here are some of them!
VPN encryptors
Sometimes, it is necessary to communicate over the Internet, but the sensitivity of the information can hinder you from being able to openly send it to the recipient. The solution is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) encryptor. VPN encryptors can be used to protect your network, while connected to the Internet, by creating secure and private tunnels between a device and a network, or between two networks. In this way, you can be connected to the Internet, but the information you send to other units within the private network is encrypted and securely sent through the tunnels, resulting in traffic that cannot be read by anyone outside of your private network. You are thereby protecting your network by protecting how the information flows between units or networks.
Many encryption solutions are mainly software-based, like the solutions used for remote work. These solutions are simple to use and not so expensive but are not made for information at the highest security level. Purely software-based solutions are simply not enough for providing top-level security due to vulnerabilities to advanced attacks, but they can be enough for other use cases.
Hardware-based encryption solutions are more expensive and can be a bit more complicated to handle, but if you have sensitive information or information that needs stronger protection – which makes security the highest priority – hardware solutions should be your choice.
Read more about encryption and the Advenica solution SecuriVPN!
Firewalls
A firewall protects your network by only allowing certain traffic to enter or exit. It monitors and filters traffic based on rule setups.
With a firewall, it is difficult to know exactly what information is being exported or imported into the system. A firewall configuration often becomes complex, which increases the risk of misconfiguration. Firewalls also do not separate administration and data flow in a way that protects the information from insiders. Organisations that have sensitive information and that operate in critical infrastructure, public sector or the defence industry, need their networks to keep a higher level of security. That is why more solutions than a firewall are often needed.
Data diodes
A data diode is a cybersecurity solution that ensures unidirectional information exchange. This high assurance hardware device maintains both network integrity by preventing intrusion, as well as network confidentiality by protecting the most security sensitive information.
Data diodes are the failsafe way to protect sensitive systems and confidential data. Data diodes are small hardware devices, also called “unidirectional security gateways”, which sit between two networks. Working like a check valve, the function of a data diode is to allow all data to pass in the forward direction, while blocking all data in the reverse direction. And as it is not software, it cannot be directly attacked by malicious code, which results in high assurance.
Read more about when to use data diodes and about Advenica’s data diodes and how they work!
Security Gateways
A security gateway is a device that controls the information exchange that takes place between different security domains.
If you have security sensitive or even classified information, you may need a solution that offers secure and filtered bidirectional communication. In this case, you need to ensure secure bidirectional communication and be sure that nothing malicious enters your sensitive networks, and that sensitive information and data does not leak to a less sensitive and less protected network.
The purpose is to apply strict information-level control during information transfers and mitigate cybersecurity threats such as manipulation, data leakage and intrusion. A security gateway only forwards received information when it complies with its policy which is derived from your organisation’s information security policy. The policy implemented in the security gateway defines accepted structures, formats, types, values and even digital signatures. When a message is sent from one security domain to another across a security gateway, information in the message is analysed according to the configured policy. Approved parts of the received message are put into a new message which is sent to the intended receiver in the other domain. In this way, you know that only allowed information crosses this boundary.
Advenica’s solution is ZoneGuard, read more about it here!
Advenica has the cybersecurity solutions you need
What are your security challenges?
- Do you need to securely integrate IT and OT systems?
- Do you need to secure your remote access?
- Do you want to be able to transfer sensitive information from a SCADA system?
- Need to find a secure solution for traceability and logging?
- Want to avoid the security risks of updating your systems?
- Do you need secure communication with remote sites?
Read more about how our solutions can help you with these and similar challenges!
Want to read event more about our products? You will find the information here!
