Insights from the NISA International SCADA Security Forum conference

We all know that SCADA has been considered a security nightmare for a long time. Admittedly, I only have a short experience with such systems and control systems in general (just short of two years), but the topic is fascinating. The main challenges in securing control systems from my point of view is the ability to “connect” with the domain experts and understand the systems and processes properly.
Unfortunately, we, as a security community are far from it (at least based on what I have seen in the past couple of days in the conference). The rush to force traditional IT solutions and ways of thinking onto control systems just do not work. From “learning” firewalls that monitor the industrial control protocols, to systems that are designed to ADD complexity to the threat modeling by layering network and Internet related threats to SIEM mechanisms and add the “scada” data to it. These are all solutions that are Bound to fail as they do not understand the actual needs and operational state of mind of control systems engineering.

If we take a new and unbiased look at what kind of data and processes are involved in such systems, we (as in the security community) would be thrilled to learn that there are a lot of untapped intelligence resources that would substantially help us in building a more appropriate and relevant detection and alerting mechanisms. Trying to force an IT solution on these would be an exercise in fitting a square peg into a round hole, and as exciting as that may be we all know what would be the outcome of it.

To sum things up – just as you would not pretend to know the environment of a financial or a commercial customer when approaching the task of securing it, control systems pose an ever more distinct challenge. Open up, keep the critical thinking and most of all LISTEN. You’ll find out that long before you can start pushing the “cyber” agenda, you have much to work with just with the basic data and processes already at hand, and that there is a lot of value that a security practitioner can bring to such an organization.

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