2023-05-08 08:06:33
Threats evolve faster than cybersecurity can. What do hackers want? Steal confidential data belonging to the target organization, its customers and suppliers, and invade control systems. Often an attack can come from something as small and seemingly innocuous as a USB flash drive. The infamous Stuxnet virus that infiltrated an Iranian nuclear power plant in 2010 came from a USB drive used by an engineer on his personal computer.
An increasingly mobile workforce brings even higher risks, and more than half of energy and utility companies are already concerned that their remote workers have been hacked. With the rise of BYOD, a cyberattack is now inevitable. People’s Energy customers had their details stolen in a major attack in 2020, when an unauthorized third party gained access to their data storage systems. And in 2018, a third-party data theft on a smart control valve nearly destroyed a chemical plant in Saudi Arabia.
But the scope does not only concern employees of energy professionals. How can you be sure that suppliers and supply chain partners are taking cybersecurity seriously? In 2018, a major utility company was fined $2.7 million for third-party data theft.
Electric utilities are among the worst performers when it comes to patching the catastrophic BlueKeep vulnerability, which many utilities are still exposed to. It is therefore necessary to offer each employee, supplier and customer complete peace of mind. In this sense, taking into consideration the threats related to personal USB devices and those belonging to the company is today an imperative.
The goal is to reduce the risk of malware entering IT networks via remote collaborators, regardless of what the owner has accidentally downloaded. On this point, in the end it will then be possible to no longer suffer from costly cyberattacks, loss of reputation and regulatory fines.
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