Control System Cyber Vulnerabilities and Potential Mitigation of Risk for Utilities

Today's global industrial infrastructure includes thousands of electric utilities, water/wastewater management companies, oil and gas suppliers, chemical manufacturers and other facilities critical to daily functioning. At the same time, the control and monitoring system networks that operate these infrastructures are among the most vulnerable targets for hackers, extortionists and disgruntled or ineffective employees. As organizations progressively rely more on off-the-shelf operating systems and Internet-based remote access to carry out production tasks, traditional control networks are open to the worms, viruses and application-level attacks that proliferate online. One means of securing these vulnerable systems, without replacing the entire industrial infrastructure, is to use network-based security.