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Cybersecurity

ICS Security and the Insider Threat – Misconfiguration Issues are a Threat to Safety

Misconfigurations of an IT system might shut systems down, misroute traffic, or bring communications to a halt. Those outcomes are frustrating and negatively impact the availability of data, but misconfigurations within OT/ICS networks have the potential to go beyond a little annoyance and inconvenience and could expose industrial operations to hazardous scenarios that threaten the safety of the system, the environment, or human life. Misconfigurations are caused by people, and people make unintentional mistakes.

Critical Infrastructure Still Under Fire – Two Passenger Transportation Entities Impacted by Cyber Attacks

In a seeming continuously growing list of attacks on critical infrastructure, two major passenger transportation entities reported yesterday they had fallen victim. The Steamship Authority, the largest ferry service to the Massachusetts Islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket from Cape Cod, reported that ransomware disrupted its services causing delays and taking the web-based and phone-based reservation systems offline. According to a tweet by The Steamship Authority, there was no impact to the safety of vessel operations, as the issue did not affect radar or GPS functionality.

Cybersecurity Resilience – Protective DNS, a Consideration for Network Security

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the backbone of the internet and is what makes navigating to websites and sending emails seamless to humans. Unfortunately, like many internet protocols, DNS is also abused by threat actors – from exploiting user domain name typos to transmitting malicious data over what appears to be legitimate and expected DNS network traffic. The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) Central Security Service has released an InfoSheet on adopting encrypted (protective) DNS in enterprise environments.

Managing OT Cyber Insurance

While cyber insurance has matured during the past few years, there are still many lesser understood facets, especially OT needs and requirements. In a recent post, Verve Industrial poignantly states, even as threats to critical controls systems grow exponentially, cyber insurance underwriters have been slow to update rating tables to incorporate growing cyber-physical risks. Organizations, likewise, often fail to adequately account for OT/ICS risks and basic controls in their overall assessment strategies.

New Ransomware has Unpatched Exchange Servers Seeing (Epsilon) Red

Another exploitation opportunity is taking advantage of still unpatched on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers. Last week, Sophos discovered a new ransomware strain, calling itself Epsilon Red that was observed targeting a U.S.-based company in the hospitality sector. According to Sophos, it isn’t clear whether the attack was enabled by the ProxyLogon exploit or another vulnerability, but it seems likely that the root cause was an unpatched server.

OT Compromises – AEIOU (Actors Exploiting Infrastructure Often Unsophisticated)

A recent threat research post by Mandiant Threat Intelligence highlights the increasing frequency of OT compromises by low sophistication threat actors. The majority of these compromises occur due to insecure OT systems exposed to the internet. According to Mandiant’s report, the compromises appear to be driven by threat actors who are motivated to achieve ideological, egotistical, or financial objectives by taking advantage of an ample supply of internet-connected OT systems.

Basic (Cybersecurity) Doesn’t Mean Trivial, but it Does Mean Foundational

According to countless reports of risk assessments, vulnerability assessments, penetration tests, and disclosed incidents, organizations of all sizes and sectors are not doing well with basic cybersecurity. The reasons why (excuses) vary from entity to entity, but what shouldn’t be an excuse is cost. Cybersecurity doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Granted, at some point you’ll want/need or have the budget for the next shiny thing, but that currently elusive shiny thing should not stop anyone from embracing a lot of the best practice guidance already out there – for no cost.

Executive Order 14028, Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity in Small Manageable Chunks

Much has been said about the new Executive Order (EO 14028), Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, released earlier this month (covered in the Security & Resilience Update for May 13, 2021). And if you have had time to read the EO, then feel free to move to the next write-up. However, those of us who haven’t reviewed it and what it could mean beyond federal networks, may find a series by aDolus Inc.

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