CISA Alert: NSA and CISA Recommend Immediate Actions to Reduce Exposure across Operational Technologies and Systems

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published a new alert recommending critical infrastructure owners and operators take immediate steps to reduce exposure of operational technology (OT) and control systems. The alert notes that due to the increase in adversary capabilities and activity, the criticality to U.S. national security and way of life, and the vulnerability of OT systems, civilian infrastructure makes attractive targets for foreign powers attempting to do harm to U.S. interests or retaliate for perceived U.S. aggression. It also observes that internet-accessible OT assets are becoming more prevalent across the 16 U.S. critical infrastructure sectors as companies increase remote operations and monitoring, accommodate a decentralized workforce, and expand outsourcing of key skill areas such as instrumentation and control, OT asset management/maintenance, and in some cases, process operations and maintenance. To help the vulnerabilities in OT assets, the report lists a series of mitigation measures, which have been organized into categories like “have a resilience plan for OT,” “harden your network,” and “implement a continuous and vigilant system monitoring program.” Read the alert at CISA.