Attention Utilities: The FBI wants to talk to you about Cybersecurity!

I cannot be alone in this.   Everyone must be at least a wee bit nervous to visit the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), even the totally, completely, thoroughly innocent such as me.

The FBI has seen a significant escalation in foreign state-sponsored intrusions of SCADA systems recently.  The FBI categorizes cyber threats by type of attacker:

• Foreign state-sponsored actors (Most significant threat level)
• Criminal hackers (Crooks out for financial gain)
• Hacktivists (Driven to send a political/social message)

According to FBI data, 48% of system compromises take less than a day to complete.  75% are not detected for a week or more.  Close to 90% could have been avoided through simple, intermediate controls and efforts.  So, how does a utility avoid being part of these frightening stats about compromises?  Given that a utility has to plan for three possible kinds of cyber attacks from three varied sources with a number of different potential motives, where does a utility start planning?

Utility players can reach out to the FBI cyber squads at any time.  Talk to the FBI yourself!  Local field divisions are available to talk to you about vulnerabilities and options.  One option for cybersecurity chats:  the InfraGard program.  For more information about this program, go to: www.infragard.net.

Even a small threat can cascade!  At 360factors, we can help utilities create powerful cybersecurity software, ensuring that new cyber assets and changes to existing cyber assets do not adversely affect their vulnerability.  360factors provides an easier way to manage all your NERC Standards, Compliance to these standards, practices, and procedures, Gap Analysis, RSAW, NERC Audits, and Job Task Analysis.