Just a few years ago, plants didn't have to worry about the safety of their networks. From an IT point of view, plants were silos -- succinct and secure. That changed over the past decade. To improve efficiency, plants connected out to the company's back office and beyond to suppliers and customers.
The increased connectivity gives the business office insight into what the plant is producing, what orders are complete, and what new supplies need to be ordered. The network can alert customers that a shipment is on the way. It can also alert suppliers that a new shipment is needed. Most of the connectivity runs along Internet connections.
This extended network prompted a battle between the organization's IT team and the control folks on the factory floor. IT is accustomed to adding patches late at night, when the office employees are gone. A quick reboot, and everything is fine when the office employees show up the next morning. With plant networks, that's not so easy. If a plant is running 24/7, you can't add patches and reboot without shutting down the plant.
In addition, the plant is now vulnerable to hacking. When automation and control managers discuss this challenge, the vulnerability that most worries plant employees is not terrorists, hackers, or competitors -- it's disgruntled employees. Who else would know how to crack the system, push the right buttons, and pull the right levers to disrupt the network?
Design News will present a radio show on this topic on Thursday, Dec. 6, at 12:00 p.m. EST. It's free and open to all. You can sign up for the program, "Network Security: Don't Get Hacked," by clicking here. The presenter is Eric J. Byres, CTO and vice president of engineering of Tofino Security, one of the leading experts on network security. During the half-hour presentation (followed by a half-hour of online chat), Eric will discuss the challenges and solutions for securing your network.
Thanks, Rob, a clear summary of the tensions between IT and the factory floor on this subject. Not only does connectivity and these conflicts affect a local network because of 24/7 use, it also affects everyone around the world in different time zones. Many times I'm accessing a website to make a purchase or to find out financial account data, and because it's on a Sunday or after 5 PM in someone else's time zone, I get an error message saying they're doing a security update or other maintenance.
Thanks, Ann. More and more companies are gaining a handle on the tention between IT and control managers. The going solution is to create a team that includes both control and IT folks.
Rob--a team with both control and IT people? Who talk to each other? What a novel idea! Kidding aside (I think), it's sure taken a long time to bring that about. Glad to hear it.
Yes, Ann, in successful deployments now, many companies are creating these IT/control teams. Some of this comes through vendor encouragement. Apparently, these teams have been successful at reconciling the needs for 24/7 plant uptime and IT concerns over security.
It seems to make sense, Ann. Yet I think the struggle between control engineers and IT folks is fairly recent. For decades, the plant floor was run on networks that were not linked out to the company's back office and supply chain. As for these teams that include control and IT, a lot of that movement seems to have come from vendors as a suggested best practice.
I see what you mean. But Ethernet has been invading the factory since the late 80s, and began to infiltrate the back end--the plant floor--around that time in some industries, even if it was only cobbled together custom attempts at interfacing the control system with early IT networks. So the conflicts began over 20 years ago.
Ann, wasn't that a closed loop back then? Since that was before the Internet, I would think they didn't have the same conflict over patches that they do now.
Rob, that was before the Web, but not before the Internet (I started posting my stories to the Computer Design bulletin board using a 300-baud modem in 1989. For those of you who don't know what that means, it was a very, very slow modem connection to the pre-Web predecessor of a website). In any case, these were not closed loops where I worked, or at the company's customers.
Yes, Ann, I remember the Internet before the WWW. In the early 80s, I worked for a company that prepared articles for sites such as Dialog and sites like Lexus and Nexus. That was back in the day when intermediaries such as special librarians often ran the online searches.
It was a small world with publications such as Online Review and Information Today. I'll never forget when I saw a TV commercial for America Online. I couldn't belive this small online world had spilled over into the consumer world.
Rob, I'd forgotten about those online search specialists. That does take me back! I also remember the debut of AOL, and using the first browser, Mosaic, which later morphed into Netscape.
Yes, Ann, it was quite a transition from those early dial-up services to the Internet we now know. One significant change is that you no longer need a librarian intermediary between you and the information you're seeking. I remember attending an online conference in the mid-80s. A presenter from one of the major online services (I think McGraw-Hill) demonstrated a page of information. I took about two minutes for the page to load. He admitted that the Internet was not quite ready for consumers.
If the company has to ask, is the network safe, it probably isn't. The only way to keep it safe is to remove outside connectivity in any way. But that doesn't stop the disgruntled internal ne're-do-well. All a company can do is stay current and respond to industry warnings. If in the process something else fails... what can be done? Isolation is the key.
There has never been a case of medical implant hacking, but it became a major panic for the med sector recently. Now they scramble to find solutions. Companies pop up to handle the phantom threat. In this case, is it really a concern? Or is it a case of better safe than sorry?
Me too, Charles. In the old days at the semiconductor company I worked at, as a member of test engineering I was also expected to help with keeping everybody's computers up and running. We never thought much about network security beyond the barebones administrator privileges. With the increase in interconnectivity and establishment of IT departments, computer security has become so much more than guarding against a virus attacking your computer - so much so that some companies have gone to the extreme. I have a friend that works for an engineering company and he can't even download datasheets because of the security settings by their IT department. If there is no activity on his keyboard for longer than five minutes it automatically logs him out. It would be nice for companies like that to adapt different strategies where the network is kept secure but the employees can still access the data they need. I am surprised to read that disgruntled employees are feared the most - I would think it would be unethical competitors...but then the disgruntled employees that leave may become the unethical competitors. It always astounds me how much time and energy people devote to such a destructive and dishonest practice as hacking, often with no logical return except for the accomplishment they feel in being able to do it - if they directed their energy to honest productivity they would be so much better off...
Yes it is a good question, Chuck. When plants were silos, safety wasn't a concern. That has really changed in recent years. Plant networks now connect out to ERP systems and supply chain partners. Another thing that has changed is the use of energy. Ten years ago plants didn't care about energy savings. Wow, has that changed.
One very simple and inexpensive way to hack a companie's network has been described to me, and it would work in a lot of places, particularly those where the system hub is in a closet, not a server room. All a visitor would need is a cheap wireless router and a eternet cable. Plug the cable into the system hub and then into the router, plug in the router, and place it above the dropped ceiling of the closet. The company network could then be accessed by anyone with the router password, within range. And if the hack were discovered, finding the snooper would not be simple, because of the wireless link.
The same volunderability is often found in office building networks where there are wire-closets sometimes left open in hallways. easy instant hacking, with no pesky passwords if the right wireless hub is used.
As one of the co-founders of the SCADASEC e-mail list, Chairman of the DNP User Group, and a voting member of the committee that reviews and writes the DNP3 SCADA protocol (also known as IEEE-1815), this subject is very near and dear to my heart and to my career.
Eric Byres is a well known and highly regarded expert in this field. But there are differences of opinion and there are practicalities that have to be answered.
For example, you could build a perfectly secure system and it would be very labor intensive, and so unusable that the whole process you're working on becomes uneconommical. It's just like trying to build a bulletproof fighter jet. You can certainly protect certain key parts, but you can't protect the whole thing. It would be so heavy that it would never get off the ground.
Likewise with SCADA and control systems, we need lightweight but effective security that doesn't get too far in the way of those who use it and doesn't become so difficult to use that it is cheaper to run operations manually.
The big secret to maintaining a posture of this sort is to keep the data hounds at bay. All this idiotic talk of "Big Data" presumes that someone will "surf" over this data and discover lovely gold nuggets of precious observations that will save the company money. The latter is predicated on gathering the data cheaply. Well, if you want to keep it secure, it won't be cheap any more.
The other problem is that there are too many people with glossy CIO literature who salivate puddles of drool over knowing real time data in the boardroom. No CEO in his or her right mind would want to know data in this detail. It does no good except if you dream of micro-managing your company toward insanity.
There are judgement calls to be made. There are political situations that need to be addressed. And frankly, it is time for some pushback against the "real time" data hounds who have no understanding of the business processes, the industrial processes, or where the leadership of the company wants to go.
We need to get more secure. Of that there is no dispute. The differences of opinion are on the hows and whys.
We would like to think that we're defending against evil script kiddies living in their Mom's Basment, or some foreign hacker working for a government agency. So many decide to defend against the faceless Man-In-The-Middle attacks because they're an easy sell to management. But that's not what experince has shown.
In reality most of them are your co-workers. Yes, the ones you drink coffee with every morning. Aside of the flimsy and unstable designs or configurations, it usually takes extensive inside knowledge to do real, lasting damage to most control sytems.
That's why the most notorious cases are usually the work of insiders.
Jake, that's what I've always thought. The disgruntled employee is the most dangerous hacker. That employee is the one who knows where are the buttons and levers are.
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