IT/OT convergence is an oft-repeated term, and maybe it’s the wrong term.From a technology standpoint, IT/OT convergence has been occurring since at least the 1990s when HMI/Operator Stations began running on Windows and when Ethernet began displacing deterministic custom LAN protocols in the OT realm. This technology convergence has continued with net

Digital transformation is at the heart of every industry. There are no longer any industries that are immune to the rapid adoption of this movement. When we think of the construction industry, we may think back to an image of ironworkers sitting over a city and enjoying a lunch break on a construction beam. However, rapid digitalization has tr

In the beginning of May, a U.S. pipeline company suffered a ransomware attack. The company decided to respond by halting operations while it investigated the incident. This delayed tens of millions of gallons of fuel from reaching their destination all along the East Coast.Less than a week later, Bloomberg reported that the company had paid millions of dolla

Everything evolves. Simply stated, the gradual development of something from a simple to a more complex form is what evolution is all about. When something ceases to evolve, yet still exists, it becomes classified as a living fossil. One example is the Ginkgo Biloba tree. It took millions of years for this evolution to cease. This all happened

Confidence isn’t new when it comes to cybersecurity. All the way back in 2015, for example, 86% of security professionals working in the energy sector told Tripwire that they were confident they could detect a breach in a week. Just less than half (49%) said it wouldn’t take them longer than a day to spot an attack.It was the same story a year later when Tri

Data breaches are costing organizations millions of dollars on average. In its 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report, IBM found that a data breach cost the average organization $3.86 million. This price tag was even greater for organizations located in the United States and operating in the healthcare industry at $8.64 million and $7.13 million, respectively.Wha

On January 20, President Joseph Biden issued Executive Order (E.O.) 13990 to help protect U.S. bulk power organizations. This Order enacted a 90-day suspension of E.O. 13920 which was set by the previous administration. The new executive order empowered the Secretary of Energy (“Secretary”) to publish new criteria around pre-qualifying vendors of electric eq

Attacks against operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) grew dramatically in the past few years. Indeed, a 2020 report found that digital attacks against those two kinds of assets increased by over 2000% between 2018 and 2020. Many of those attacks involved vulnerabilities in Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems a

On May 8th, I was at a gas station filling up my car before a trip I was taking when the news about a cyberattack against a large pipeline company broke. The attack led them to halt all operations. Ultimately, the incident stemmed from a ransomware infection in which a well-known threat actor took volumes of corporate data in just two hours and made their de

There is a saying in cybersecurity that “Data is the new oil.” If that is true, then that oil is powering not only the economy but also industry. The term ‘Industry 4.0’ refers to the fourth industrial revolution where traditional manufacturing and industrial processes are increasingly using IT and data to the point that we’re now seeing the emergence of ‘sm

Over the weekend, the Alpharetta, GA based Colonial Pipeline was hit by an extensive ransomware attack that shut down its information technology (IT) and industrial operational technology (OT) systems. Simply put, an all-too-common ransomware event targeting IT systems encouraged a voluntary shutdown on the production side (OT) of the business to prevent fur

The US Defense Department and third-party military contractors are being advised to strengthen the security of their operational technology (OT) in the wake of security breaches, such as the SolarWinds supply chain attack.The guidance comes from the NSA, which this week has issued a cybersecurity advisory entitled “Stop Malicious Cyber Activity Against

When it comes to cybersecurity, industrial IT—consisting mainly of operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS)—has failed to keep up with development in the enterprise IT world. That’s mostly because industries’ adoption of internet technology has been slower when compared with enterprises.It would take some time to close the gap, but co

The latest Honeywell USB Threat Report 2020 indicates that the number of threats specifically targeting Operational Technology systems has nearly doubled from 16% to 28%, while the number of threats capable of disrupting those systems rose from 26% to 59% over the same period.Let’s face it. Critical infrastructure operators in manufacturing, aerospace, energ

Organizations are increasingly introducing new Internet of Things (IoT) devices into their environments. According to Statista, the aggregate number of IoT devices deployed by organizations globally increased from 7.74 billion in 2019 to around 8.74 billion a year later. The market and consumer data firm reported that the next few years will see growth in al