A global survey of 1,000 security professionals commissioned by industrial cybersecurity company Claroty has revealed that over 70% would rather work in IT enterprise cybersecurity than industrial security.The respondents of the survey represented the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Australia. Globally, over 75% of IT security pros said t

Publicly available hacking tools, many of which have been developed for research and testing purposes, lower the bar for threat actors looking to target industrial control systems (ICS) and operational technology (OT) networks, FireEye warned this week.The cybersecurity firm told SecurityWeek that its Mandiant Intelligence team tracks nearly 100 tools that c

Strategies for Evaluating Secure Remote Access Solutions for OT/ICS NetworksOver the past decade, the number of employees in the U.S. working from home half-time or more has risen to an estimated five million, according to Global Workplace Analytics. However, those numbers now pale in comparison to today’s reality of businesses everywhere encouraging as many

Several potentially serious vulnerabilities have been discovered in some of the industrial 4G routers made by Phoenix Contact, a Germany-based provider of industrial automation, connectivity and interface solutions.The security holes were discovered by cybersecurity consultancy SEC Consult and the vendor has released firmware updates that should patch the fl

Tens of vulnerabilities discovered by Cisco Talos researchers in WAGO products expose some of the company’s controllers and human-machine interface (HMI) panels to remote attacks.Talos and Germany’s VDE CERT this week published advisories describing roughly 30 vulnerabilities identified in devices made by WAGO, a German company specializing in electrical con

The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) revealed this week that malicious actors breached its corporate network.ENTSO-E represents 42 electricity transmission system operators (TSOs) from 35 countries in Europe. TSOs are responsible for the transmission of electric power across the main high-voltage networks, and ENTSO

In my previous column, I talked about the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape and the escalation of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. Some of you may be wondering: “Why should I care? Russia and other nation-states aren’t focused on me and my networks.”If you’re a CISO at an insurance company or a medical facility or any organization where these n

The Reading Municipal Light Department (RMLD), an electric utility in Massachusetts, informed customers on Monday that its systems were targeted last week in a ransomware attack.RMLD says it serves over 68,000 residents in the towns of Reading, North Reading, Wilmington and Lynnfield Center.The company says the ransomware attack had no impact on the delivery

Researchers from Cisco’s Talos intelligence and research group have identified a dozen vulnerabilities in a wireless networking device made by Taiwan-based industrial networking, computing and automation solutions provider Moxa.According to advisories published on Monday by both Moxa and Talos, AWK-3131A industrial AP/bridge/client devices are affected by 12

The cost of poorly protected device identities has long been assumed, but not proven, to be large. Specification of the part played by SSH abuse within a breach report is rare despite compromised machine identities being used by attackers to hide their malicious activity, evade security controls and steal a wide range of confidential data.Now risk modeling a

Honeywell has released patches for a couple of potentially serious vulnerabilities affecting a web server used by its Notifier fire alarm systems.Gjoko Krstic, researcher at industrial cybersecurity firm Applied Risk, discovered that the NOTI-FIRE-NET Web Server (NWS-3) is affected by authorization bypass (CVE-2020-6972) and information disclosure vulnerabil

More than 400 vulnerabilities affecting industrial control systems (ICS) were disclosed in 2019 and over a quarter of them had no patches when their existence was made public, according to a report published on Thursday by industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos.Dragos analyzed 438 ICS vulnerabilities covered in 212 security advisories, roughly the same as in t

Researchers Find Internet-Exposed, Poorly Protected Out of Band Consoles Commonly Used in Maritime and Oil & Gas IndustriesVulnerable, improperly protected Out of Band (OOB) consoles expose ships, drilling rigs, remote shore-based facilities, and even mobile vehicles to attackers, researchers from security firm Pen Test Partners warn.The use of OOB manag

A ransomware infection at a natural gas compression facility in the United States resulted in a two-day operational shutdown of an entire pipeline asset, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed on Tuesday.The targeted organization has not been named and it’s unclear exactly when the incident occu

A serious vulnerability found in the Profinet industrial communication protocol exposes devices from Siemens, Moxa and possibly other vendors to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.The high-severity vulnerability was discovered last year by researchers at OTORIO, a company that provides industrial cybersecurity solutions. They discovered that an attacker can eas