Cyber-Attack Response In Utility Organizations

Operational technology is more vulnerable than Informational technology, according to the Siemens report. Cybercriminals have shifted their attention towards hijacking control systems and logic controllers that involve critical infrastructure. For example, software-managed gas turbines and brownfield engine exchanges. During a survey conducted, 54% of the organizations responded that they expect a cyber-attack in the coming year. 

These organizations stay under pressure to comply to maintain the security of everyday necessities such as power, water, and energy, thus, any targeted malware attack can get them in hot water.

Cybersecurity Best Practices to Support Effective Response

Many public power utilities are taking steps to improve their cyber risk management capabilities in a host of areas. Examples of these best practices include:

• Establish a process to identify and evaluate cybersecurity risks that can compromise energy delivery operations.
• Develop and enforce strong access control policies and procedures for requesting, approving, providing, and revoking access for employees, devices, and entities.
• Identify sources of threat and vulnerability information and create a process for collecting, cataloging, and addressing information collected from internal and external sources.
• Maintain network, systems, and application security by training IT staff on in-house security standards.
• Create a policy that specifies where and how long to retain system logs such as firewall, intrusion detection system, and application logs.
• Conduct regularly scheduled training to educate and test employees’ cybersecurity awareness.
• Improve communication and coordination among IT cybersecurity and OT staff. OT staff should understand cyber technical requirements, as cyber incidents affecting operational systems can threaten energy delivery.
• Ensure, that equipment must be purchased from a reputable vendor with reliable products

Cyber Incident Handling Process

Guidance and recommendations for utility organizations

 To get more protection from these attacks, these organizations can improve security operations by getting improved visibility into OT systems. They can also train their employees and workers to improve their skills in this complex tech world and can increase security improvements. Generally, utilities may have multiple layers of networks or they have numerous sub-networks with different networks going on and, all networks need security and protection at various levels from cyberattacks. 

Moreover, they must have a system that can take action in case of threat occurrence or predict upcoming threats in the system. AI can play a vital role in this dimension and can detect obfuscated threats that are unable to be detected by a normal anti-virus. However, utilities will have to face a surge in cyberattacks targeting OT systems in the coming future, so preparedness is the need of an hour.

NetworkFort is providing more visibility into utility organizations’ network

The aforementioned risk can be mitigated by getting more granular visibility into networks and, Networkfort is the best option to get this visibility. It provides up to date on security technology that can protect their OT assets through different security services and products. Network for offers a tool NetworkFort that exposes any intrusion attempt by an attacker to shut down the communication system by using Real-time detection of the internal network. It also identifies attempts for compromised accounts and critical data and also exposes the tactics used by intruders to evade the deployed security software.

For further details, please visit our website http://www.networkfort.com