Stanley Black & Decker

Christopher Nichols, Director OT/ IT Resiliency & Support, Stanley Black & Decker

AS TECHNOLOGY EXPANDS AT AN INCREASINGLY HIGH RATE; AND AS MANUFACTURING HAS A GREATER NEED TO CONNECT DEVICES TO BUSINESS SYSTEMS, WHAT’S THE NEXT STEPS?

There are lots of systems and tools which can be deployed to monitor real-time information for real-time decision-making, connecting to Manufacturing Execution Systems, Maintenance, Quality, and others. But with so many choices out there, how do you choose? How do you keep your environments secure? These are exactly the questions EVERYONE should be asking.

IT/OT convergence is the integration of IT systems with operational technology (OT) systems. IT systems are used for data-centric computing and OT systems are used to monitor events, processes and devices, and make adjustments in enterprise and industrial operations. Due to the growing need to link andintegrate IT and OT systems for real-time information and integrating platforms, it’s time to understand the risks and start planning to secure your environments.

It is critical to note that this convergence between IT and OT carries risk because Industrial Control Systems (ICS), which are used in almost every machine or infrastructure – handling physical processes – are often unpatched and do not play nice with anti-virus software so they are highly susceptible to attacks. For OT organizations responsible for critical infrastructure, any hint of compromise needs to be taken very seriously. This is why it is time to get down to business to start planning to secure your environments.

"It Is Important That You Understand That The Enormous Presence Of Unprotected Iiot Devices Is Providing Opportunities For Threat Actors"

While IT systems are mostly standardized, UDP/TCP/IP, OT systems use a wide array of protocols, many of which are specific to either function, industries, geography, etc. As IIoT devices become more common, external partner products present significant challenges to creating secure environments: there is a larger challenge to secure legacy systems. In effect, digital transformation efforts generate these structural problems, and these problems become exacerbated by poor IT security hygiene practices within OT environments. This is largely due to the insecure deployment of IIoT devices, a lack of visibility of the devices, or the interface of them through networks to business systems.

It is IMPORTANT that you understand that the enormous presence of unprotected IIoT devices is providing opportunities for threat actors. The terrifying part is that most of these devices are plug-and-play without the need for passwords or configurations which essentially makes security optional. Many of these types of devices are shipped with commonly known default passwords to provide easy access to configuration panels. You might be able to imagine that it is not so difficult for hackers to create botnets to trigger distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) which freezes or disables systems. From a technical point of view, these attacks have elaborate mechanisms that are difficult to detect because they are encrypted and designed to profile processes. These attacks can enter your poorly secured OT environments into your business systems to exfiltrate organizational data and threaten to leak it or steal proprietary information.

We know that the devices are not secure and pose threats to organizations, but there are additional concerns that need to be mentioned. The first is the accidental insider who is on a quest to create greater efficiencies and productivity lacks security awareness; they may accidentally introduce conditions that make environments more susceptible through ill-advised changes in configurations. Secondly are external actors: As most organizations need help from external partners to set up these new shiny things, accidents can happen. Third is a malicious insider: a trusted person with technical knowledge and access who manipulates systems. The fourth, a malicious outsider, whether an external partner or a hacker, the lack of security controls puts organizations at unnecessary risk.

All these points should alarm you, and you should not be taking these risks. So, what do you do? The best answer is planning a physical separation of devices and networks. For example, do not co-locate IT and OT applications on the same physical infrastructure. It looks more economical to have centralized infrastructure for IT and OT applications and infrastructure, but they should be separated. OT lower-level devices should be on-premise and not have access to the internet and controls can manage who has access to those devices using the local OT infrastructure. Secondly, evaluate your firewalls to ensure you have separation between IT and OT, this way the firewalls can act to prevent OT devices from going through the IT networks, and vice versa. Thirdly, segregate internal networks: IT and OT systems should have separate VLANs; this way, individual switch ports can be configured to that VLAN. Separate internal PLC networks from external and cutoff reverse SSH connections; instead build a VM in the iDMZ.

There are a lot of considerations to plan for. Many solution providers are using PCs as managers for their systems but they are far less secure than a physical server and so that device must be placed into the lower level and accessed through a Jump Host. There are also considerations on the failover devices, clusters versus high availability, methods and devices to scan OT environments, and the big one – Support Processes. So do yourself a favor and get educated to lead to architecture discussions, which will lead to system needs.