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The Next Disruptive ICS Attack: 3 Likely Sources for Major Disruptions

Image Faced with rows of empty gas pumps, many Americans on the East Coast may be wondering why this happened, whether it will happen again, or if there is anything we can do to avoid future catastrophe. The unpleasant truth of the matter is that this will certainly not be the last time society is disrupted due to attackers targeting...
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What’s New in v8 of the CIS Controls

Image Back in 2018, the State of Security spent a lot of time going over v7 of the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls (CIS Controls). We noted at the time how the Center for Internet Security shuffled the order of requirements for many of the existing controls in that version. It also cleaned up the language of...
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Mind the GAAP: A Lens for Understanding the Importance of the CIS Controls

Image Given that attacks are only increasing and there needs to be greater efficacy in how companies protect themselves, let us reference how the financial industry has created and relies on a body of standards to address issues in financial accounting as a defined comparison for Information Security. To support this argument, there...
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Industrial Cybersecurity: Guidelines for Protecting Critical Infrastructure

Image Over the weekend, the Alpharetta-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...
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Industrial Security: Not Just IT and OT, but Old OT and New OT

Image Lane Thames, PhD and principal security researcher at Tripwire explains the challenges you might not have considered in IT/OT convergence. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2w3lsuN3V1ZOiLVGqxw58v?si=5lVBp46tTiK7tfzmCnpeuA Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5UDKiGLlzxhiGnd6FtvEnmStitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the...
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How Tripwire Can Help U.S. Federal Agencies Implement the CIS Controls

Image Digital attackers are increasingly launching sophisticated campaigns in an effort to target U.S. federal agencies and other organizations. Two recent examples demonstrate this reality. These are the SolarWinds supply chain attack and the HAFNIUM Exchange exploit campaign. The SolarWinds Supply Chain Attack In mid-December 2020...
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Industrial IoT Needs to Catch Up to Consumer IoT

Image 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...
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Report: USB threats to ICS systems have nearly doubled

Image 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...
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How Can the Trucking Industry Secure Their Telematics?

Image The trucking sector is essential to countless other industries. Without reliable transportation, supply chains would crumble, and companies and consumers would face shortages. With so much riding on it, it’s no wonder why the industry has fully embraced technology like telematics in recent years. Telematics refers to the suite...
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N-Day Vulnerabilities: How They Threaten Your ICS Systems' Security

Image In the last quarter of 2019, researchers at ClearSky uncovered an attack operation that they dubbed the “Fox Kitten Campaign.” Iranian actors used this offensive to gain persistent access into the networks of dozens of companies operating in Israel and around the world across the IT, telecommunication, oil and gas, aviation,...
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Design & Implementation of OEM ICS Cybersecurity Frameworks: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Image The cyber threat landscape today continues to pose a myriad of unique challenges. This is especially the case for industrial organizations due to factors such as aging equipment, poor design or implementation, skills gaps and a lack of visibility. These shortcomings are exacerbated by the mean time to breach detection, which...
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Attacks Targeting ICS & OT Assets Grew 2000% Since 2018, Report Reveals

Image The digital threat landscape is always changing. This year is an excellent (albeit extreme) example. With the help of Dimensional Research, Tripwire found out that 58% of IT security professionals were more concerned about the security of their employees’ home networks than they were before the outbreak of coronavirus 2019 ...
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The Perimeter Really Is Gone - CIS Controls and COVID-19 with Tony Sager

Image Tony Sager, Senior Vice President and Chief Evangelist at CIS (Center for Internet Security) joins us to discuss the best approaches to the changing security landscape in the wake of COVID-19. Tony is a lifelong defender, with more than 44 years of experience. He spent most of his career at the NSA and now leads the development...
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Cybersecurity in Education (K-12) with the CIS Controls

Image Why is cybersecurity important to Education? Acknowledging recent reports of ransomware targeting educational institutions, it is no wonder that there have also been articles that attempt to lure in readers with “free” tools. What is disappointing is that these “free” tools are little more than marketing pieces that direct you...
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Results Speak Louder Than Words: A Guide to Evaluating ICS Security Tools

Image Why leveraging live environment simulations and putting ICS tools to the test is the best way to evaluate their fitness. Track and field was one of my favorite sports growing up. I didn’t begin competitively participating until I was a teenager, but I was instantly hooked once I started. Why? Because the clock didn’t lie. The...
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Quick Guide to Modern Security Configuration Management

Security configuration management is the cybersecurity process of ensuring systems are properly configured to meet security and compliance standards, reducing cyber risk in the process. The practice of detecting and remediating misconfigurations combines elements of integrity monitoring, configuration validation, vulnerability assessment, and system remediation. "The...
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Navigating ICS Security: Having your Action Plan Ready

Image 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...
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Navigating ICS Security: Best Practices for ICS Decision-Makers

Image As a security consultant, I’m not going into an environment to design and build an organization’s network from the ground up in most situations. For the majority of the time, I’m working with legacy environments where some old technologies might be phasing out and newer ones joining the mix of solutions. In the case of one...
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Introducing the New MITRE ATT&CK Framework for Industrial Control Systems

Image On January 7th, MITRE released ATT&CK for Industrial Control Systems, a taxonomy of real-world cyber adversarial behavior targeting ICS or industrial control systems. These systems operate critical infrastructure in manufacturing and utility industries, and they are popular targets in financial and espionage motivated attacks....