To help counter the growing concern about cyberattacks aiming to disrupt power systems, industrial experts have been working together in WG15. This group, part of IEC, is defining the standards known as IEC 62351, for secure-by-design power grids.
As a member of WG 15 since 2015, I thought it might be helpful to inform you about these standards and provide an update on their status.
We’re excited to tell you that GE and Nozomi Networks have joined forces to provide our advanced cyber security solution to power utilities and critical infrastructure operations around the world.
Our global agreement gives GE Power customers immediate access to our leading real-time ICS visibility, network monitoring and cyber security solutions.
Based on recent reports of Russian involvement in a multistage intrusion of the US power grid, it’s no longer a question of “if” threat actors will gain access to critical infrastructure control systems – it’s when it will happen again, and for what purpose.
What can be done to thwart these potentially disruptive assaults?
One of the findings of the recent SANS report “Securing Industrial Control Systems – 2017” is that the number one technology industrial organizations are looking to implement over the next 18 months is intrusion detection.
Up until recently, detecting anomalies on ICS networks that might be caused by a cyberattack has been ”mission impossible.” That’s because such networks typically include equipment from a wide assortment of vendors, run thousands of real-time processes and generate huge volumes of data. Analyzing and monitoring this data to detect anomalies was very difficult.
The good news is that a new generation of ICS cyber security tool is available for industrial intrusion detection. This article describes how our product, SCADAguardian does it, and gives an example of how it would detect and counter a cyberattack on a regional control center of an electric power utility.