2021 was the year that marked a major cyber-attack against a critical national infrastructure organization whose impact was felt by millions of Americans on the East Coast. However, the attack against the Colonial Pipeline Company was not the only incident that affected the Operational Technology (OT) systems of a critical sector for the U.S. national econom

Industrial control systems (ICS) are specific kinds of assets and associated instrumentation that help to oversee industrial processes. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, there are three common types of ICS. These are supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, which help organizations to control dispersed assets;

When an unfortunate event occurs, people tend to be curious about who was responsible for the event. It can be interesting and helpful to know who your enemy is and what their motives might be. But in cybersecurity, the primary focus is ultimately on preventative and detective measures to avoid similar issues.Let’s use a recent example to illustrate this poi

As we begin a new year, many organizations will enter a “goal-setting and strategic planning” season. During this time, individuals are re-energized and motivated to record new accomplishments for their professional development. Traditional corporate goal setting aligns with fiscal calendars and forces companies and individuals to build goals in chunks of 36

IT environments have always been considered the forefront when it comes to cybersecurity, and OT environments have been the forefront when it comes to physical security.As more and more cyber threats are taking place, and with an increasing number recently focused on OT environments, everyone seems to be concerned with how to upscale and secure their OT esta

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

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we discussed how Spectre attacks have come back from the dead; why Facebook banned Instragram ads by Signal; we highlighted the differences between the most popular VPN protocols; pointed out that Google is about to start automatically enrolling users in two-step verification, and how millions are put at risk by old, out of da

Attacks against industrial control systems (ICS) are on the rise. In its 2020 X-Force Threat Intelligence Report, for instance, IBM found that digital attacks targeting organizations’ ICS had increased by more than 2,000% between 2019 and 2018. Most of those attacks involved the exploitation of vulnerabilities affecting supervisory control and data acquisiti

Digital threats confronting Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) are on the rise. That’s because attackers are increasingly going after the Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) that shareholders use to protect these assets. In their report “Caught in the Crosshairs: Are Utilities Keeping Up with the Industrial Cyber Threat?,” fo

NSA is warning of cyber attacks launched by foreign threat actors against organizations in the critical infrastructure sector across the U.S. The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an alert warning of cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure across the U.S. “Over recent mont

The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) laid out a series of recommendations for critical infrastructure owners and operators to protect their operational technology (OT) assets.In an alert published on July 23, CISA published an alert in which it recognized malicious actors’ growing willingn

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning critical U.S. infrastructure operators of a recent ransomware attack that affected a natural gas compression facility. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an alert across critical U.S. infrastructure sectors about a recent infection at a natural gas comp

According to IBM, OT attacks increased by over 2000 percent in 2019, most of them involved the Echobot IoT malware. IBM’s 2020 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index report analyzes the threat landscape in 2019, the experts observed a spike in the number of OT attacks. According to IBM X-Force, attacks targeting operational technology (OT) infrastructure in

Trust, respect, understanding. These are all two-way relationships that must be earned over time. Whilst someone being hired in a senior position will likely already have a certain level of each, part of your job is to continuously cultivate all three of these elements with colleagues no matter your grade. When working within a cybersecurity practice, it is

Schneider Electric, Allen-Bradley, General Electric (GE) and more vendors are vulnerable to ClearEnergy ransomware. Researchers at CRITIFENCE® Critical Infrastructure and SCADA/ICS Cyber Threats Research Group have demonstrated this week a new proof of concept ransomware attack aiming to erase (clear) the ladder logic diagram in Programmable Logic Controlle