Defense in Depth

When I started Tofino Security in 2006, my two goals were to make industrial cyber security easy to deploy and better suited for the real needs of mission critical networks. Our first generation products went a long way in doing that, but like any initial offerings they reflected a limited feedback loop from users in the field.

Today I am proud to say that we have integrated lessons learned over the last eight years to deliver Tofino 2.0, our next generation of industrial cyber security solutions.

Tofino 2.0 is a suite of products and services that includes:

If you are a regular follower of this blog, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been writing much in the past few months. I have simply been too busy, traveling and speaking at some really great security conferences.

Our last blog, contributed by Thomas Nuth, highlighted the fact that industrial cyber security is now being discussed by heads of state within the international community - the Executive Order – Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity signed by President Obama in February of this year being just one indication of the importance being attached to th

January is the Cruelest Month

Google gave interviews over the holidays discussing the top searches done by people in various countries in 2012 (Google Zeitgeist 2012). “Zeitgeist” is “spirit of the age or spirit of the time” and it is interesting to see that for the U.S. the top search for the year was for Whitney Houston, while in Germany it was for EM12 (European football championships) and in Australia it was for Gangnam Style.

Early in 2012 Eric Byres wrote a blog article predicting what he thought would happen in 2012 with regards to SCADA and ICS security. I went back to his blog and highlighted the four main predictions he made. Then I asked him to rate himself on each one.

Browsing this week’s industry newsletters, I noticed that Automation World had two related stories on new technologies:

Editor's Note

Last year Eric’s holiday gift suggestion got his culinary juices flowing with the idea of a sous-vide oven; or for the true controls engineer, the plans to build your own. He was pleasantly surprised a few weeks later, when a sous-vide oven arrived under the tree.

“Lacking extravagant IT budgets, automation systems also require cyber security systems that just work, with a minimum of human intervention.”

Who is responsible for fixing the thousands (some say 100,000) of vulnerabilities that exist in PLCs, DCS, RTUs and other automation devices that are in use in facilities around the world?

On the one hand, we have the position of Dale Peterson at Digital Bond. Dale ardently argues for (and takes) aggressive measures to pressure ICS vendors into making their products more secure. Through their 2012 Project Basecamp and subsequent disclosures, Digital Bond publically released vulnerability details for a large number of controllers.

In last week's blog, Heather wrote an excellent summary of Mark Cooksley's network security presentation regarding "Why Industrial Networks are Different than IT Networks". In it she noted that the number one goal of ICS security is based on the concern for safety. This is spot-on in my opinion. However, there is more to consider when it comes to industrial security priorities…

Previously we looked at the question of “Why are PLCs so insecure?” Today we are going to come at SCADA security from another angle, which is “Why is securing Industrial Networks different than securing IT Networks?” We will also look at three ways to address these differences.

Last week I wrote about a serious issue in the patching of SCADA and ICS systems. Just when you think you are installing all needed patches, some critical ones are getting missed.

For those of us passionate about industrial security it is great to see it being integrated into networking training as it was at the Belden Industrial Ethernet Infrastructure Design Seminar held near Chicago earlier this week.

Did Iran really detect a planned "massive cyber attack" against its nuclear facilities, as reported by Reuters last week? And, have they really “taken [the] necessary measures” to contain it?

Professor Paul Dorey recently presented a paper about the seven important lessons the IT world has learned in managing Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). In this article, I will discuss lessons #2, #3 and #4, and how to apply these lessons to ICS and SCADA security.

Recently a very complex worm called Flame has been discovered attacking companies in the Middle East, and it is an excellent example of what security experts call an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT). Figuring out how to defend against APTs is a major focus in the IT security world.

Recently I wrote about one of the fundamentals of industrial cyber security, which is the concept of Defense in Depth.

Today I am going to write about another foundation concept, which goes hand-in-hand with Defense in Depth, and that is using ANSI/ISA-99 Standards to improve control system security.

Factors that have degraded Control Network Security

There are two opposing trends impacting control network design today:

In my earlier column on the philosophy of Defense in Depth, I discussed how relying on a single defensive solution exposes a system to a single point of failure. No matter how well designed or strong that single defense is, either resourceful adversaries or Murphy’s Law eventually results in the defense malfunctioning or being bypassed. When that happens, the entire system is wide open to attack.