Malicious actors are increasingly launching digital attacks against industrial organizations. Many of these campaigns have been successful, particularly those that have targeted energy utilities and manufacturing plants. In late spring 2019, for instance, aircraft parts manufacturer ASCO temporarily suspended operations worldwide after falling victim to a ransomware attack.

Organizations are increasingly preoccupied with strengthening the digital security of their industrial control systems (ICS). They no doubt heard FireEye reveal that it had detected a second intrusion by the same actor behind Triton malware at a second critical infrastructure organization. More recently, they likely heard confirmation of a digital attack that struck the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) in Tamil Nadu, India back in September.

With more and more automation systems and industrial devices being connected to networks, raw data from every device can be transformed into a treasure chest of valuable information. Granted, this data can help to optimize the process, but with connectivity comes new ICS cybersecurity concerns.

To protect the integrity and safety of their business-critical assets, cybersecurity must be a top priority for the oil and gas industry. Although they operate some of the nation’s most critical systems, securing these complex infrastructures can be a huge challenge.

Industrial organizations face a growing list of digital threats these days. Back in April 2019, for instance, FireEye revealed that it had observed an additional intrusion by the threat group behind the destructive TRITON malware at another critical infrastructure.

Digital attackers are increasingly targeting industrial environments these days. Take manufacturing organizations, for instance. Back in late-August, FortiGuard Labs discovered a malspam campaign that had targeted a large U.S. manufacturing company with a variant of the LokiBot infostealer family. It wasn’t long thereafter when Bloomberg reported on the efforts of bad actors to target Airbus by infiltrating its suppliers’ networks.

What camp are you in? In the camp that believes in air-gaps, or the other set that says they truly do not exist? Air-gap networks are networks that are physically and logically isolated from other networks where communication between these networks is not physically or logically possible.

With connectivity to the outside world growing, cyber attacks on industrial computers constitute an extremely dangerous threat, as these types of incidents can cause material losses and production downtime for a whole system. Moreover, industrial enterprises knocked out of service can seriously undermine a region’s social welfare, ecology and macroeconomics. Not surprisingly, cybersecurity is therefore becoming more and more important across the board.