Enabling Business Through Safety, Security
Tuesday March 29, 2016
Gregory Hale
Editor and Founder Gregory Hale has over 30 years in the publishing industry covering manufacturing automation for 10 years as the Chief Editor of InTech magazine. Prior to starting atInTech in 1999, Hale was the Editor in Chief at Post-Newsweek’s Reseller Management magazine. In addition, he is the co-author of the book, “Automation Made Easy” “Everything You Wanted to Know About Automation – and Need to Ask”.
An oil platform stood silently awash in the Gulf of Mexico waves a short time ago and unbeknownst to workers on the rig and those offshore, malware was on board turning that facility into a potential floating time bomb.
Malware, downloaded via satellite and through USB drives, incapacitated computer networks and left the rig lifeless, unable to perform any duties for a period of time.
While the rig eventually came back on stream after workers furiously fixed the locked up system, it turned out a worm was flooding their network out in the middle of the ocean. Had this incident been a targeted attack, the rig could have sustained major problems.
With enough knowledge of a facility like an oil platform, refinery, or pipeline network, a cyber attack that used distributed malware could lead to physical damage and serious losses of revenue.
There is no explaining how many millions of dollars that unplanned downtime cost the oil company. In today’s tight economy, companies, big or small, cannot afford to lose that kind of money to any kind of safety or security incident. Uptime remains critical.
Uptime Remains Critical
The cost of unplanned downtime is just one case to show management there is a solid business proposition behind employing solid safety and security programs. The idea pushing forth in the industry today is safety and security are not just insurance policies to protect against an incident or bad guys, but rather a business enabler that keeps the network and system up and running, productive and profitable.
