Operational Technology: The Growing Cyber-Kinetic Front in the SecOps War

In a room illuminated only by the monitors clustered around him, a hacker somewhere in the eastern hemisphere types a command in a PuTTY client. Outside a city in Florida, in a nondescript concrete building, a card deck sided device’s network traffic lights begin flashing. The low voltage wire on the other side of the device energizes, causing the attached solenoid valve to open, flooding the water supply with dangerously high levels of chlorine.

What sounds like a movie script is becoming routine as attackers increasingly turn their gaze towards operational technology. These attacks close pipelines, stop factories, cut off electricity and threaten life and health of thousands of people.

Attackers target OT not just because of the potential for damage but, ironically, because these systems are often so woefully vulnerable and long ignored by organizations in terms of cyber security.

In this real training for free session, we define Operational Technology, explain how it is a superset of the possibly more familiar terms like SCADA and Industrial Control Systems (ICS). We discuss what contributes to the vulnerability of OT at so many organizations and we explore recent breaches such as:

• Toyota Supply Chain
• Oldsmar Water Plant
• Aliquippa Water Plant
• Tata Power Plant
• Danish State Railways

A key strategy in protecting OT assets is the use of privilege management technologies traditionally used for IT systems. Paul DaSilva, Sr Solution Architect at BeyondTrust demos BeyondTrust Privilege Remote Access solution used to securely access OT environments.