Cyber Security for Energy Sector: Roadmap to Achieve Energy Delivery Systems – Kaspersky Lab
By Ndubuisi Micheal Obineme
Kaspersky Lab offers Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity (KICS) for Energy, which is dedicated to helping energy companies secure every layer of their industrial infrastructure, without impacting on the operational continuity and consistency of technological processes.
Speaking to Oil and Gas Republic Journalist on an exclusive interview, The Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab Africa, Riaan Badenhorst commented, “As a result of technology innovations, ‘self-contained’ electrical power control systems can no longer be considered isolated. Rather, most are now globally integrated, connecting with other corporate services. In the energy sector, new levels of connectivity, combined with the pervasiveness of IT and Internet technologies in daily life (smart grids) is a reality, however these systems can be highly exposed from an IT security perspective, which creates major challenges for the electric power sector. In fact, Kaspersky Lab’s recent report on industrial cybersecurity found that 92% of externally available industrial control system (ICS) devices use open and insecure Internet connection protocols”
“The risk of cyber-attacks in the energy sector is greater than ever before and,as a result, IT security has become a key point of discussion within the industrial sector. Modern electrical power grids are complex networks, with integrated automation and control functions, that communicate through open protocols and do not have sufficient built-in cybersecurity functions to combat the increasingly sophisticated range of security threats they face, Riaan Badenhorst said”
He also said that an effective security approach and solution is needed, to further help the energy sector in managing this. Such an approach to cybersecurity in the energy sector must accumulate intelligence on the latest threats, in order to develop protection technologies that are effective. This is especially true for industrial infrastructure, which has specific threats, highly customised hardware and software, and strict requirements for reliability.
Kaspersky Lab’s solution protects SCADA level control centers and Substation Automation Systems on every level: upper level of automation including: Servers, HMI, Gateways, Engineering workstations. Secondary automation equipment: Protection relays, Bay Controllers, Merging units, RTU and other substation bus and process bus IED and overall network infrastructure.
