Just as the IoT blends together the physical and electronic world, it also blends together traditional IT capabilities with business processes—business processes that have the ability to impact the bottom line of an organization when interrupted. Impacts can include financial loss, reputation damage, and even personnel safety and loss of life. Managing IoT-related incidents requires security staff to have better insights into how the compromise or disruption of a particular IoT system impacts the business. Responders should be familiar with business continuity plans (which need to be developed with the IoT system in mind) to determine which steps to take to respond to an incident.
Microgrids provide a valuable example for incident management. Microgrids are self-contained energy generation, distribution, and management systems that may or may not be connected to a larger power distribution infrastructure. Identifying an incident involving one of the Programmable Logic Controllers...