A wastewater treatment plant outside of Baltimore, Md. Today’s columnist, Andrea Carcano of Nozomi Networks, points out that the attempted attack at the water facility February 5 in Oldsmar, Fla., underscores the vulnerability of similar plants around the country. Carcano offers five takeaways security teams can put to work. KristianBjornard CreativeCommons (Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0)
 

The attempted attack recently on the Oldsmar, Fla., water facility highlights the threats and vulnerabilities facing our nation’s critical infrastructure, including the more than 50,000 water production utilities across the United States.  If an unsophisticated attacker with a few mouse clicks can start the process of poisoning our water supply, then what could a medium or highly-skilled attacker do?

This incident reflects the state of all too many industrial control system (ICS)  installations, especially those with smaller budgets or size, where security gets overlooked or under deployed. Attackers aren’t going away, so we need to defend against remote access and supply-chain risks for the foreseeable future. How can we minimize the impact of these risks?

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Topics:

Compliance ICS security Vulnerability Management