Book Image

Industrial Cybersecurity

By : Pascal Ackerman
Book Image

Industrial Cybersecurity

By: Pascal Ackerman

Overview of this book

With industries expanding, cyber attacks have increased significantly. Understanding your control system’s vulnerabilities and learning techniques to defend critical infrastructure systems from cyber threats is increasingly important. With the help of real-world use cases, this book will teach you the methodologies and security measures necessary to protect critical infrastructure systems and will get you up to speed with identifying unique challenges.Industrial cybersecurity begins by introducing Industrial Control System (ICS) technology, including ICS architectures, communication media, and protocols. This is followed by a presentation on ICS (in) security. After presenting an ICS-related attack scenario, securing of the ICS is discussed, including topics such as network segmentation, defense-in-depth strategies, and protective solutions. Along with practical examples for protecting industrial control systems, this book details security assessments, risk management, and security program development. It also covers essential cybersecurity aspects, such as threat detection and access management. Topics related to endpoint hardening such as monitoring, updating, and anti-malware implementations are also discussed.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Industrial control system history


Way back, before Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) became the norm, plant floor automation was performed with racks and racks of industrial relays, pneumatic plunger timers, and electromagnetically counters to control the starting and stopping of motors, opening of valves, and other control-related process interactions. The program that ran the control for such a setup was not a program at all but a combination of interconnected circuits, timers, and relays. By forming the electrical paths, physical actions such as opening valves, running motors, and turning on lights were accomplished. The programmer of a relay system like this was the plant floor electrical engineer and program changes involved physically changing the electrical circuits. There was no programmer's Terminal or interface to connect to and there weren't any networking communications to speak of.

All this made these types of systems very predefined, stagnant in nature, and not flexible...