Cyber Security in the Energy Sector Douglas DeGrote April 2015 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Cyber Security in the Energy Sector

Douglas DeGrote

April 2015

The Importance of Cyber Security

 The field of affect has changed

 More control systems and critical infrastructure is online

 The ability to cause widespread issues is greater than

ever before

 The level of destruction in attacks has increased

significantly

 The reliance on digital technology has multiplied each

year

 The frequency and complexity of threats has made

prevention very difficult

 The number of bad actors continues to increase

Increasing Scope of Security in Utilities

 Traditionally most of the control operations of generation,

transmission and distribution were isolated systems

 This has changed dramatically over the past several years

 The criticality of electricity within dependent industries

has increased significantly

 Communications, digital information and powered technology

have become core to services delivery

 Threats have changed to much more than stealing

information

 The intent of harm is much more prevalent…and increasing

The Changing Threat Landscape

 Attacks used to focus on the real target

 Now focused on supporting and inter-dependent infrastructure  Energy is Key – electricity is “Core” to most everything

 Attack vectors have changed

 Not just malware and brute force breaches that can be “seen”  Advanced Threats require more behavior analysis to detect

 The actors have changed

 Although there are still the “Script Kiddies” out there, we now

face nation state and military based actors

 The speed of affect gives little time to react

 Technology today moves so quickly that reaction time can lead

to much greater damage

The Answer Cannot Be Internalized

 Vendors and service providers bring risk

 A good vendor risk management program is needed

 Physical attacks compound the danger of a cyber attack

 We’ve become more reliant on visibility to, and remote control of

asset operations

 Threat information sharing and cross industry analysis is

becoming critical

 Need to have the “big picture” in order to protect the pieces

 Regulations can help drive improvement

 Findings that drive security investment would be more beneficial

The Good News Is…

 We’ve made cyber security a priority  We’ve made significant improvements already  Information sharing has become a focus and will bring

even more improvements to threat understanding and

• ur ability to identify and stop attacks

In summary

 Cyber Security is core to protecting our critical

infrastructure

 This is a quickly moving target and requires consistent

and constant concentration

 There is no “silver bullet”. We need to be prepared to

react and recover just as much as we need to protect.

 We need to work together within and across industries  We’ve made good progress, but there’s more to do

THANK YOU