View: Stay a step ahead of cybergangs

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

In 2021, the Texas-to-New York Colonial Pipeline suffered a ransomware attack. The pipeline carries 55% of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel consumed on the US East Coast. It resumed only after a $4.4 million ransom was paid in bitcoins in exchange for a decryption tool.

• In August 2012, Saudi Arabia's Aramco's network was hit by a malware program.

• In 2020, two attempts were made to compromise Israel's water system.

• Research and consulting firm Gartner has predicted that cyber attackers will weaponise operational technology (OT) by 2025. So, what is OT?

• It is the hardware and software that monitor and control equipment, including critical infrastructure. In the industrial sector, it includes oil and gas, manufacturing, petrochemicals, transportation and utilities.

• It controls traffic signals in transportation systems, pumps and valves in pipelines, and robots and conveyor belts in manufacturing.

• Its non-industrial uses include monitoring and controlling medical equipment, heating, ventilation and AC systems in building automation, point-of-sale systems in retail, and lighting and sound in theatres.

According to Gartner, such attacks on OTs could lead to:

• Physical harm to humans.

• Commercial vandalism.

• Reputational damage.

• Adverse financial impact could exceed $50 billion by 2023 for compensation, litigation, insurance, regulatory fines and reputational loss, without even accounting for the value of human life.

OT is a subject that industry leaders should be cognisant of since it could involve outages at nuclear power plants, big chemical boilers and giant dams, and lead to the collapse of power grids.

Scada (supervisory control and data acquisition) is an important acronym in the OT lexicon. It