Denial-of-Control Attacks
These risks can be far more devastating than those to normal corporate networks, says James Phillippe, executive director of Advanced Security Center at Ernst & Young. "Attacks used to be for quick financial gain," he says, but adds they now can be anything from competitors stealing proprietary secrets on plant operation to terrorists attempting to take over operations to cause physical damage.
Kitchel says these denial-of-control attacks are the most threatening to operations. With these, "the attacker would find a way to directly communicate with a device or operations through existing wireless access and basically manipulate it outside of operational safety conditions," he says. This can hurt operations in two ways: financially by interfering with the manufacturing process, which would result in costly delays and product defects; and physically by, for example, accelerating turbines past their safety thresholds, which could hold potentially deadly consequences. "With these attacks, there is a real potential of physical harm of the people in the area," says Kitchel.
For some manufacturers, the potential security issues involved in adopting a wireless network are resulting in a very cautious implementation process. Michael Bastion, global controls manager at Ford Motor Co.'s Powertrain Division, recently spent 18 months working with his IT department to implement just one network. "We have really struggled getting through IT approval for wireless in the control space," he says. "To be honest, we probably are behind the industry a bit when it comes to wireless because of the security and interference issues."
Though common, this hyper-vigilance over cybersecurity may be a bit too much, says Kitchel. The potential for attacks that has been slowing this progress may not actually be quite as great as it seems. In fact, many of these risks can be mitigated simply by adopting existing security measures in a safe, sensible manner. There are only a few issues standing in the way.
The first is the use of inadequate safety tools. While there is a temptation to simply convert existing security systems into the operations network, Ernst & Young's Phillippe says, "You can't just replicate corporate IT into your OT [operational technology] environment and expect to be safe." He recommends using an industrial network system "designed specifically with security in mind -- built from the ground up to address these kinds of security concerns."
There is a host of wireless security specifically designed for the industrial environment, says Kitchel. "They generally rely on enterprise-grade wireless technology, which has been around for a while. This means it has had a lot of time to work out a lot of kinks and bugs, so it is pretty mature in that perspective." The biggest cybersecurity issue with it, he notes, is just that it "often gets deployed in a less than secure manner."
