Our Energy Supply at Risk

As a critical component of our nation's infrastructure, the energy sector faces daunting challenges. The security, connectivity and interoperability of our energy infrastructure are only as resilient as the command and control traffic that keeps it running at peak efficiency. Yet, from small remote municipalities supported by energy co-ops to major metropolitan areas, energy infrastructures are dependent on aging equipment, IT protocols and security.

Additionally, companies that supply our oil, electricity, natural gas, and other forms of energy, have massive, geographically diverse operations on both land and sea. This makes securely accessing data from anywhere in the world a formidable challenge for even the most dedicated IT staff.

The energy sector's challenge is to weave together a reliable, secure federation of networks able to generate and distribute energy quickly, efficiently, and as cleanly as possible. To accomplish this task, the next generation of energy production and distribution infrastructure must support and protect the legacy infrastructure we presently rely on while integrating emerging solutions to the meet the increasing demand for more clean and renewable power.

Threats to the Power Source

Today, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and other real-time processes control networks run mission-critical infrastructure. But these systems are seriously outdated. And because our dependency on energy is critical to our national security, the energy sector is a prime target from highly motivated and well-funded cyber terrorists.

You also face threats from within. The cost of a disgruntled employee hacking into your network to gain sensitive data, copy customer account information, or disable physical systems can be catastrophic for you company and your business partners, and for national security.

Regulatory Restrictions

While power generation and distribution facilities clearly pre-date the information technology revolution, it isn't surprising energy companies have historically kept control system networks completely separate from their general computing networks. Now, increasing regulatory pressure to secure these critical assets and guarantee they are operating economically, reliably and safely has led utilities to consolidate networks, protect components and compensate controls. The resulting heterogeneous networks often carry a wide range of traffic over a broad spectrum of protocols and this consolidation of services will be increasingly difficult to secure as virtual infrastructure and cloud computing becomes more widely adopted.

Evolving initiatives such as Smart Grid, North American Reliable Energy Corporation, Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)/National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are also forcing you to take a closer look at your infrastructure and meet tougher compliance requirements. The more an your infrastructure evolves and the more it becomes connected to the Internet, the more critical 24/7, 365 days a year monitoring and the ability to take corrective action becomes.

ISC8 Is Turning On the Power Soon

ISC8's multi-threat security system gives you real time visibility that provides comprehensive information about everything happening on the system. Now, you will know precisely who is communicating with which devices, and mission-critical technologies such as the Smart Grid. Operators and engineers will now know everything necessary to make an informed rapid response to any potential threat, whether it's coming from an individual, organized crime, or a state-sponsored bad actor.