How can you test the effectiveness of your control system cybersecurity?

Effective risk management starts with organizations having visibility and detection capabilities in their operational environments. Passive monitoring of real-time network traffic results in an inventory of assets, network data flow mapping, and an understanding of potential exposure to vulnerabilities and risks. Detection should encompass signatures/IOCs, modeling/behavioral analysis, threat behaviors, and configuration analysis. This provides organizations with prioritized, real-time, and high fidelity alerting capabilities for early detection of user errors, insider threats, or adversarial behaviors. All of which can impact the availability, reliability, safety, and operational resilience of an organization’s operational environment.

Top-down approach for risk analysis. I suggest reading ISA/IEC 62443 3-2 and INL's CCE methodology Identify the most critical processes. The most relevant for business revenue, the most hazardous for people, environment and the site itself. Think of scenarios and their consequences: What if they stop? What if they lose control? What if their operations are abused? Identify potential attack vectors: Network Access, Physical Access, Portable Devices Access, 3rd party access... Any existing documentation fo systems, communications or security policies&procedures? With all these you can start a prioritized auditory Visibility of Assets, Vulnerabilities detected, exposed systems to outer connections

A suggested high-level approach: 1- Start with penetration testing, including ethical hacking, to uncover vulnerabilities. 2- Implement continuous monitoring and real-time analysis to detect any anomalies or breaches. 3- Calidate control effectiveness through regular, scenario-based drills, simulating actual cyber-attacks to assess how well your cybersecurity strategies prevent, detect, and respond to threats. 4- Measure the time from threat detection to response.

I would include cybersec testing in budget at the very early stage of the project. Thus, having enough money and time at the right moment I'd rather find a specific contractor and give em task to effect a tamper and then describe step-by-step, how the successful attack(s) looks like.

1. Checking latest updates and patches applied for OS and application as per OEM'S recommendation . 2. Physical computing resources are accessible to authorized personnel only. 3. If IT and OT are converged ,proper network segmentation is there or not to verify.

Here's how you can approach this step effectively 1. Prioritize based on risk 2. Balance technical, organizational, and operational aspects 3. Implement a diverse set of controls 4. Embrace virtual patching 5. Backup and recovery 6. Training and awareness 7. Incident response planning

Once Inventory audit and Risk analysis have been made, one deliverable from them should be zones & conduits diagram identifying Security Levels Targeted (SL-T) according to ISA/IEC 62443 3-2 A good way to proceed is to take 3-3 to identify security requirements according to SL's and to analyse how technologies can address such requirements. Normally you will start from segmentation and endpoint protection technologies, secure remote access and security monitoring should go next. Wireless comms security start to be a must, and access control too.

La visibilidad y el descubrimiento de activos son vitales para la seguridad y eficiencia de los sistemas de control industrial. Permiten identificar y mitigar amenazas, mejorar la operatividad y reducir riesgos cibernéticos. Utilizando Soluciones como ???????????????? ???????????? ????????????????, líder en este campo, automatiza el inventario de activos, permitiendo visualizar todo el ecosistema de IoT y automatización en un solo lugar. Esto abarca sistemas de control de acceso, CCTV, ascensores, gestión energética, incendios, HVAC, IoT, iluminación y más, ahorrando tiempo y dinero al proporcionar información siempre actualizada y precisa.

In order to implement the cotrol measures, after you have defined the security requirements and security levels, a well-crafted plan must be created and aligned with the process owner. Normally the Operations or Maintenance departments are in charge of assets, and they are the main stakeholders for any change that the control system shall go through. Implementation shall happen turing a planned stop only (e.g. a maintenance window). When the implementation of controls in being done before puting the assets in operation, the plan shall be aligned with Engineering actions, so that the whole integration strategy includes also the security controls.

Deployment of security projects in brownfield plants can advance more slowly than new threats or vulnerabilities are discovered. Therefore, oversight must be in two dimensions: 1. Projects advance 2. Controls Effectiveness If a segmentation project is 90% advanced but firewalls ruleset is blank, overall project effectiveness is Zero. Regarding monitoring, as maturity advances, SIEM reduces alerts and FWs increases logs So I do not advise to put indicators from traffic and logs at first. SIEM and IDS recently deployed can give a lot of information and alerts that could give the idea that "best protected" systems are in more risk than others systems without protection or detection controls deployed.

When controls are implemented on new systems, Engineering team should make sure that Factory and Site Acceptace Tests include actions to check that security controls are working properly.

Pentesting is a good way to test systems. It should be part of FAT program before deployment. Deploy security without previous testing means absence of V&V of added security capabilities. Once deployed, pentesting should be executed according to infrastructure operation condition. Absence of operational impact is a must. If pentest is successful some things must be considered, if protection systems were properly configured and patched and if monitoring systems detected the breach. If FAT were made and config control is in place, clearly all surface is not under protection and not all assets and connections are being monitored. As plant improves maturity, more sofisticated attacks should be tried.

It must be a holistic global synergy to stimulate cyber security fundamentals thus stamping out crimes . The attainment of my secured and control cyber security will enable my patriotic drive of making the globe a crime tree estate of human safety . With sustainable cyber security system , all sectors of human endeavours in agriculture , education , economy , democracy , climate change , transportation , health , technology , I T etc will propel dynamic improvements .

Operative experience has been always key for any industry practice, and cybersecurity applies the same. It is key to learn from attacks to the industry and evaluate potential applicability to own environment. If not done in the design phase, most relevant attacks to ICS have to be analysed. 1. Stuxnet (first attack against PLCs and HMIs in supposed isolated networks) 2. Triton (first attack against Safety Instrumented System) 3. Blackenergy (Attack against electrical Control Center and Substations) 4. industroyer (Attack exploting unlatched IED protection relays) 5. Pipedream (The suite that demonstrate that modern attacks can have modules for all the above mentioned for different ICS comm protocols

Industrial sectors have always needed to share best practices. In the past was usual to improve processes, reduce waste or improve heat rate/efficiency. Speaking of cybersecurity is the same important or more. It is because attacked sites tend to keep silent, so the perception of risk and likelihood is false. As long as data are shared, risk is better perceived. Moreover, sectorial CERTs and CSIRT should be improved as a way to provide trusted areas to share sensitive information that help the rest to prepare for similar attacks, but without risk of leak or exposure

Security has been traditionally addressed when designing SCADA HMI 's and this gives a false sense of security once systems are connected to outer networks. SCADA has to be considered an application so that security strategy must be consistent along all dimensions (user, data, application, Operative System, network, firmware). Such consistency must link to every Security Level for each zone, and each zone is not only a group of assets and networks but one or several process that, in case of different failure/attack scenario, will have different consequences, from operational stoppage or reputation to environmental impact or even lives, what should set the risk apetite.

Major challenge is conventional SW/HW/FM been used with limited access controls functionalities, which definately require upgrades keeping defence in depth mindset.

Conduct vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. The second one, provides a valuable feedback as to how the system might be compromised, and the impact that might result. Penetration tests are the best way to discover gaps and understand how security controls works, the way you intend them to, and whether the IACS are protected as risk management says they are.