A Report On The Cyber Security Triad

The ICS-CERT has four focus areas: situational awareness for CIKR stakeholders; control systems incident response and technical analysis; control systems vulnerability coordination; and strengthening cybersecurity partnerships with government departments and agencies (“National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center”, n.d.). Stuxnet was a cyber weapon that could alter and damage industrial control systems. These are the same systems that control water treatment plants, the electrical grid, and nuclear facilities all over the world (Ferran, 2012). “ICS-CERT and the [industrial control system] community have worked together successfully to identify and mitigate malicious cyber activity in critical infrastructure assets, but much remains to be done…Sophisticated and targeted cyber intrusions against [industrial control systems] across multiple critical infrastructure sectors continue to increase (Ferran,

This report provides a summary of NIST Framework and its process based on the documents SP 800-30, SP 800-37 and SP 800-39. The national agencies in United States of America and also a lot of companies are relying on the framework in order to improve their infrastructure security settings. Cybersecurity threats can exploit their systems and cybersecurity risks can affect the company’s bottom line. It can drive up costs and impact revenue but it can also affect their ability to innovate, gain and maintain customers. The framework was created through the collaboration between several governmental agencies and the private sector and it has been made as simple as possible using common language to address and manage cybersecurity risks in a cost-effective way.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a number of guidelines and best practices for cybersecurity concerns across industries; one of their most well-known guides is their Cybersecurity Framework, originally created in February 2014, with a major revision underway as of January 2017. This Framework was penned specifically for critical infrastructure organizations "to better manage and reduce cybersecurity risk,” and it outlines key cybersecurity concepts and processes needed to:

The entire cyber security industry is in a period of growth. As both corporations and private consumers are becoming aware of vulnerabilities with their online presence cyber security firms, have learned how to offer in-demand solutions for a wide variety of customers. Within the field of cyber security, there are several different types. These different types of services range from protection on the Internet of Things to producing devices to protected connected cars or phones. Each of these areas are expected to grow by the year 2020 with some being more in demand than others. In the article, “Cybersecurity Market Reacher $75 Billion in 2015, Expected to Reach $170 Billion by 2020,” Steve Morgan notes that, “the hot areas for growth are security

Defense in depth identifies the need for many security layers to be utilised in defense of the system from the bottom as physical security to the top as Data security.

challenge is to improve the access controls to the SCADA networks. A solution will make it harder for an attacker to

Since the onset of the first packet switching event that many believe to be beginning of the internet, no other technology besides the printing press has ever transformed the ability to deliver information. Although the internet is used by a large percentage of the civilized world, few Americans realize how vital cyberspace is to our national infrastructure. Today, we are faced with even more threats although it has been a recognized problem since 2009, when President Barrack Obama said “The cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation. It’s also clear that we’re not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country (Obama, 2009).” Every industry that operates in the United States is dependent on the internet for some aspect of their business. Commerce, transportation, financial institutions, military, as well as industrial control systems are all interconnected. This interconnectedness has created vulnerabilities within their infrastructure that have increasingly become targets of terrorists, script kiddies, foreign governments and hackers of all types.

The world of cyber security continues to introduce new threats each year against network infrastructures and computer devices. In the recent years, the impact from cyber-attacks has wreaked havoc on many company brands and organizational reputations. As this issue grows so does the technology to prevent and protect against these malicious attacks. It is absolutely crucial for organizations and businesses to shift focus from defense for different types of attacks to improving safeguards to mitigate the loss of sensitive data when an attack occurs. In addition to the traditional security technology used to detect an attack, companies will have to include

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is Incharge of shielding our country’s crucial infrastructure from physical and cyber dangers. Of the varied kinds of infrastructure, cyberspace is crucial constituting the information regarding the government and business operations, crisis management and readiness information, and our crucial digital and process control systems. Safeguarding these critical resources and infrastructure is

Sophisticated hackers have expanded their threat matrix to include cyber-attacks on the computer systems used to operate the world’s pipelines. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (“SCADA”) systems are increasingly subject to targeted attacks. Cyber-attacks can be perpetrated over the Internet from anywhere in the world and are capable of disrupting safe pipeline operation causing spills, explosions, or fires. The 2008 explosion on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline in Turkey was reportedly caused by a cyber-attack.

The supreme threats we face are attacks on our critical infrastructure. In July of 1996, Executive Order 13010 Critical Infrastructure Protection outlines the value of critical infrastructure as “so vital if modified, shutdown or destroyed it would debilitating US economic” ("EO 13010 Critical Infrastructures 15 July 1996," 1996). Preserving infrastructure operability has always been at the forefront of our security model; human & disaster related hazards used to sit atop the list, now cyber-attacks demand most of the attention. The alarming part to this entire subset, private sectors controls 85% of America’s critical infrastructure. The concern I have not only comes in the form of infrastructure vulnerabilities; but also the timeframe it

It is clear that it does not take an army to conduct warfare in cyberspace. What we will need is an army to defend against a well-organized attack. However, I am hopeful that security technology, laws and deterrence’s will be on par with cyber-technologies being developed. With Internet of Things (IOT) on the horizon, governments has no choice but to try to make cyberwarfare obsolete. If not, the attack surface will be extremely large, making it more difficult to monitor and to intervene in an intrusion event in a timely manner. Incident responders will have the 24/7 task of defending our networks, and commerce will eventually slowly stop. The two files below compiled by the ITU shows both the growth and complexity we have faced from 2005 to 2015. This is also a good indicator of what is to come. Our attack surface is growing beyond our capabilities, and the only way I believe we can fix this is to copy the Chinese methodology. Start training the next generation of cyber offence and defensive personnel at a much earlier

Discussion point 2: SCADA networks consists of many computers and software’s which performs many tasks and services in the organization or infrastructure which are considered to be backbone of the country which requires major protection from many cyber threats. In industrialized countries, precise census of SCADA systems is absent which is a big concern. Recently Incident Illinois on alleged water facility incident and Stuxnet virus proves that

Keywords: Critical infrastructure attacks, ICS risk assessment and management, ap-plication whitelisting AWL ,patch management, holistic approach for ICS security.

Moreover, organizations use knowledge rather than intelligence. This means that organizations rely too much on the relatively static and generic knowledge within products (e.g. virus scanners, vulnerability scanners, intrusion detection systems, application firewall, and so on). The knowledge-based approach is too static and we need to complement it with more adaptable approach based on cyber intelligence. As a result, to overcome this anti-pattern, organizations must decide what cyber intelligence to collect and how to use it. Besides, we also have to know the latest generation of attacks, Advanced Persistent Threat (APTs). APTs target people to trick them into opening malware-infected email attachments or to visit Web pages that exploit browser or plug-in vulnerabilities. For these vulnerabilities, the author demonstrates some strategies and tools against attackers. They are threat awareness, preparedness, and situational awareness. Organizations should follow these cyber intelligence to continuously analyze the strategies