Security Breach

Send us Fan Mail We’re excited to announce that Security Breach is being sponsored by Rockwell Automation. For more information on their cybersecurity solutions, you can go to rockwellautomation.com According to a recent report from security provider Barracuda Networks, 94 percent of the industrial organizations they surveyed have reported a security incident since July 2021, with 60 percent of th...

Send us Fan Mail I usually start each episode by listing off a number of escalating and intentionally frightening statistics about the rising number of cybersecurity threats facing the industrial sector. The goal is to get your attention and reinforce how your data, operations and all of your vital assets continue to be so vulnerable. Today’s guest, however, would argue that our strategies also ne...

Send us Fan Mail The numbers continue to roll in, and they’re not getting better … yet. Ransomware attack payouts continue to grow, with the average topping out at $4.5 million in 2022. Similarly, malware attacks continue to escalate and response times, due to smarter phishing schemes and harder-to-detect dormant infiltrations, are taking companies more than nine months to detect and another three...

Send us Fan Mail As the world of cybersecurity continues to spawn new threats and present the industrial sector with increasingly complex prevention, detection and response needs, we’re seeing similar advancements on the white hat side of things. In an effort to combat the tactics of hackers and ransomware scammers, technology providers are stepping up with new tools and strategies. An example is...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a reason the term industrial-grade is used to express the highest levels of reliability and durability for products. After all, if a material, technology or tool can handle the rigors and demands of manufacturing, chances are it can meet the needs of any other application. We’ve been through these facts before, but they’re worth repeating. IBM has cited manufacturing as th...

Send us Fan Mail As the saying goes, it’s the little things that kill. And in cybersecurity, that little thing can be as innocent as a singular mouse click on the wrong URL from a familiar-looking email.  A recent report from Trend Micro shows that 75 percent of all cyberattacks start with phishing emails – or messages made to look like a non-threatening communication from a colleague, vendor or t...

Send us Fan Mail The MIT Technology Review Insights recently reported that midsize companies, which would mean manufacturing enterprises with annual revenues of between $200 - $700 million, were almost 500 percent more likely to be targeted now, than just two years ago. Similarly, Fortinet has released findings indicating that 93 percent of manufacturers have had to respond to at least one intrusi...

Send us Fan Mail Recent data from cybersecurity software and services provider Mimecast offers some depth on the rising concerns presented by phishing attacks, with 96 percent of respondents acknowledging that their organization has faced some form of phishing attack in the past year. Additionally, this tactic is believed to be responsible for 36 percent of data breaches – with 84 percent of U.S....

Send us Fan Mail One of the mantras that I’ve clung to from my childhood is drawn from one of my favorite toys and shows – GI Joe. Duke, Snake Eyes and the rest of the Joes always reinforced that “Knowing is half the battle.”   If that’s truly the case, then the industrial sector still has a ways to go in fully combatting the impact of cyber attacks, and shoring up their cyber security strategies....

Send us Fan Mail On a daily basis I see a tremendous amount of data and research flow through my inbox, but a recent report from Rackspace Technology really caught my attention. According to a recent survey performed by this provider of multi-cloud services and security, two of the top cybersecurity challenges facing companies is a shortage of workers with cybersecurity skills – listed by 39% of r...

Send us Fan Mail GhostSec describes itself as a hacktivist group. Formed around 2015, the organization’s initial focus was shutting down ISIS websites and infiltrating their social media platforms.  Recently, the organization has been linked to politically-motivated attacks involving PLCs and other industrial controls in Israel, Iran and Russia. All of which have focused on vulnerabilities found w...

Send us Fan Mail Ironically enough, one of the biggest challenges surrounding cyber defense in the industrial sector is a lack of data – data about the attacks, the attackers, their tactics and how they were able to successfully orchestrate the onslaught of ransomware, phishing and malware schemes that are costing manufacturers millions of dollars and priceless amounts of downtime.  Working to ove...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Security Breach. Today we’re going to discus a vulnerability within the industrial sector that is essentially a product of progress. The enhanced data sharing capabilities and operational efficiencies that have been realized in establishing an estimated 20 billion device connections in manufacturing enterprises around the globe have come at a price for some. In the sect...

Send us Fan Mail Today we’re going to discuss an evolving vulnerability in the industrial sector – the security of cloud data and networks. We’re obviously talking about the use of IT infrastructure that’s not physically located within the plant or facility.  It’s a platform that is continuing to see an uptick in use. In fact, Netwrix , a leading cloud network security solutions provider, recently...

Send us Fan Mail When discussing the industrial sector’s threat landscape, we often detail events that result from vulnerabilities discovered by hackers probing for soft spots within an organization’s networks, connected infrastructure or data storage centers. However, taking a look at Nuspire’s latest Threat Landscape Report reiterates the need for manufacturers to keep their defenses up even whe...

Send us Fan Mail When the Eastern European hacker group DarkSide shut down the Colonial Pipeline in May of 2021, the ramifications were felt across numerous landscapes. In addition to impacting air travel and triggering panic over gasoline availability, the six-day interruption of fuel to much of the Eastern United States led to one of the highest profile ransomware payments in recent history. Alt...

Send us Fan Mail Tenable recently released their Ransomware Ecosystem white paper. So we sat down with Satnam Narang, a research engineer focused on security response at the company, to discuss some its findings, including: The FBI estimates that between 2013 and 2019, ransomware groups collectively earned over $144 million. That number skyrocketed in in 2020 with these groups reportedly raking in...

Send us Fan Mail A great deal of cybersecurity attention, and rightfully so, is paid to the role of defending against and responding to outside attackers. However, just as important to establishing and reinforcing cyber plans is ensuring that internal vulnerabilities are not created or made easier to detect through systems, networks and new technologies that are introduced to the industrial infras...

Send us Fan Mail What else can we say as it relates to the industrial sector and the cybersecurity threats that continue to present themselves, other than – the battle wages on. The value of the sector’s IP, the plethora of personal information and the vital need to maintain uptime makes manufacturing a favorite target of hackers. And as those in the financial and healthcare markets know all too w...

Send us Fan Mail There were a lot of trends emanating from the mid-1980s that thankfully died out over time, but one of them has not only persisted, but thrived. Although there were numerous samples of malware impacting early computer networks, the one that captured both headlines and the admiration of cyber criminals was the PC-Write Trojan virus.  Iterations would follow, with perhaps the best k...

Send us Fan Mail The rise in ransomware attacks throughout the industrial sector has led to a surge in another, related activity – the purchasing of cyber insurance to help soften the blow of these attacks. But today’s guest emphasizes that beyond just insurance to cover the costs of these intrusions, the manufacturing sector needs to implement more proactive strategies that encompass prevention a...

Send us Fan Mail JBS Foods is a $30B meat processor that most people didn’t know about until they paid ransomware attackers REvil $11M last June in order to get plants in the U.S. and Brazil up and running, and prevent what is believed to be up to 5 TB of data from being leaked. According to SecurityScorecard.com, the hackers obtained leaked credentials from employees in Australia and began probin...

Send us Fan Mail You’ve probably heard a number of reports citing ransomware as the leading attack strategy within the industrial sector. In some instances, it’s been reported that ransomware groups are focusing as much as 70 percent of their activity on manufacturing enterprises.  In one report from ICS security specialist Dragos , it was reported that 65 percent of all attacks thrown at the indu...

Send us Fan Mail The surge in cyberattacks experienced by the industrial sector has been credited to a number of issues ranging from outdated security software to lagging protocols surrounding data access and storage. But, according to today’s guest, one of the main reasons we’ve seen an uptick in these attacks could simply be because they’re more profitable. Joel Burleson Davis is the CTO of Secu...

Send us Fan Mail The industrial sector knows all too well about the need to innovate product offerings and production strategies in order to stay ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, the same can be said for cyber criminals looking to either steal information or hold your data, manufacturing capabilities, or intellectual property for ransom.  Just as you continue to develop new strategies to r...