{"id":10498,"date":"2018-03-26T17:47:21","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T16:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.riskinsight-wavestone.com\/?p=10498\/"},"modified":"2020-01-02T11:30:48","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T10:30:48","slug":"ics-news-1-en","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.riskinsight-wavestone.com\/en\/2018\/03\/ics-news-1-en\/","title":{"rendered":"Industrial Control System Cybersecurity News #1 – What to remember from 2017?"},"content":{"rendered":"

>>Editorial:\u00a0What to remember from 2017?<\/h2>\n

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are complex systems that aim to control industrial processes. ICS can be found in several sectors: energy, nuclear, transport, chemistry\u2026 In brief these systems control many of the critical productive assets of companies or states making their compromise by adversaries a high risk on the environment or people\u2019s lives.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thus, the cybersecurity of these systems is crucial<\/strong>. Moreover, securing these systems may be challenging due to their complexity (mainly because ICS are a mix of technologies and their lifetime is longer than usual information systems\u2019).<\/p>\n

In order to meet our clients\u2019 needs and answer to their future concerns, Wavestone has been conducting an ICS cybersecurity watch where every recent study<\/strong>, attack or incident and report regarding the security of Industrial Control Systems are studied. In 2017, more than 80 news<\/strong> were reported from which we can retrieve a lot of teachings.<\/p>\n

So, what did we notice this year?<\/h3>\n

First of all, ICS had its share of attacks<\/strong>. However, this year\u2019s attacks, more than the other years\u2019, had an unusual worldwide impact. Indeed, while ICS attacks were usually localized on a device (for instance on health devices), factory (for example a cryptomining malware found in a water utility \u2013 for more information see below) or a region (Dallas emergency sirens ignition in April 2017), 2017\u2019s attacks started locally and spread quickly impacting several production lines in the world (WannaCry and NotPetya).<\/p>\n

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During 2017, many attacks have been reported in the news. Moreover, we noticed that several national agencies, governments or political figures alerted on ongoing attacks or attempts on critical infrastructure. The sector that was the most targeted seems to be the Energy sector. Indeed, several news were reported from Turkey (in January), USA (in March, July), Baltic States (in May), UK (in July) and Ireland (in July) showing that this sector was a privileged target by hackers (state sponsored or not).<\/p>\n

The energy sector wasn\u2019t the only hot topic of the year<\/strong>, as a matter of fact, autonomous cars<\/strong> cybersecurity hit many times the headlines (even if that topic may or may not be considered as related to industrial control systems). This is mainly due to the fact that cars\u2019 cybersecurity is a new market. Therefore, cybersecurity experts and researchers try to find vulnerabilities and exploits (for example vulnerability found in airbag control units), while car manufacturers launch partnerships and initiatives showing that cybersecurity is now one of their main concerns (for example GM invited ethical hackers to try and hack its cars).<\/p>\n

Finally, the ICS cybersecurity market tends to grow as demonstrated by the several fundraisings and partnerships signed during this year. In a broader perspective, we can notice three kinds of actors<\/strong> in the ICS cybersecurity market:<\/p>\n