Faced with rows of empty gas pumps, many Americans on the East Coast may be wondering why this happened, whether it will happen again, or if there is anything we can do to avoid future catastrophe. The unpleasant truth of the matter is that this will certainly not be the last time society is disrupted due to attackers targeting critical industrial control systems (ICS). The impact of such an attack is amplified by the growing reliance on automation and antiquated protocols throughout many OT networks.

Cloud compliance is more important than ever, especially as businesses and organizations continue to engage in remote and digital work practices due to COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, more and more companies were migrating to the cloud. But what exactly is cloud compliance, and what are some best practices you should keep in mind if you’re shopping for a provider or looking to enhance your current computing system?

Organizations can take various steps to protect their operational technology (OT) environments against digital threats. But some stand out more than others. In particular, network segmentation is described as “the first answer to insufficient ICS (Industrial Control System) cybersecurity.” Experts advocate zoning ICS assets to coordinate informational technology (IT) and OT environments effectively. That doesn’t always happen, however.

With the regular and much needed update to critical standards such as HIPAA, auditors and compliance experts need to be continuously on their toes to review and acquaint themselves with these new developments. One of the latest such updates is the Health Information Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) Enforcement rule, which has caused quite a stir in the industry due to confusion about its applicability.

Data breaches and ransomware attacks aren’t just still occurring. They’re also becoming more frequent. According to ZDNet, the number of ransomware attacks detected and blocked by one security firm grew 715% year-over-year in 2020 alone. Another security company calculated the total number of ransomware attacks for the year to be around 65,000, wrote NPR. That’s about seven ransomware incidents every hour.

A bipartisan Senate bill would require some businesses to report data breaches to law enforcement within 24 hours or face financial penalties and the loss of government contracts. The legislation from Senate Intelligence Chair and Democratic Senator Mark Warner with Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Susan Collins is just one of several new cybersecurity bills that will likely be debated this year. If passed, the bill could require certain U.S.

IT/OT convergence is an oft-repeated term, and maybe it’s the wrong term. From a technology standpoint, IT/OT convergence has been occurring since at least the 1990s when HMI/Operator Stations began running on Windows and when Ethernet began displacing deterministic custom LAN protocols in the OT realm. This technology convergence has continued with networking, cybersecurity, virtualization, edge, zero trust, etc.

An EO is a written, signed, and published directive from the President that manages operations of the federal government, and although some EO’s require legislative approval, they effectively become law. It comes on the back of several high profile incidents involving Microsoft (Exchange), SolarWinds and the recent Colonial Pipeline incident. It is seen as a much-needed step to modernise and protect federal networks and improve information sharing between the private and US government.

SIEM (pronounced like “sim” from “simulation”), which stands for Security Information and Event Management, was conceived of as primarily a log aggregation device. However, a SIEM’s primary capabilities are to provide threat detection, better enable incident investigation, and speed up your incident response time, while also giving you a unified, holistic view of your infrastructure.

There are many important factors to consider when choosing a cloud provider for your cloud use cases. For organizations in heavily regulated industries, compliance with relevant regulations is one of the most important things to think about. Whether you’re planning for a single cloud workload or a hybrid multi-cloud setup, maintaining compliance for sensitive data in the cloud is imperative.