A breach in the energy sector causes loss to the company and disrupts millions of people. Therefore, the enterprises need to provide an in-depth focus for preparing the companies to fight against cyber attacks and other threats.
People can be harmed if the crucial infrastructure is compromised, particularly with OT/IT Boundary vulnerabilities. But, it is also essential to know that infrastructure is targeted through people.
Once data is shared, it attains the hands of employees and contractors. As the energy sector prides on ironclad technological protection measures and initiatives implemented via multi-year plans, bad actors are likely to circumvent them and approach softer targets.
Compromised employee credentials can also create chaos, particularly at a plant level, where the damage to the electrical grid can ruin both employees and operations. Under ordinary circumstances, the network's baseline behavior is collected across users, accounts, and machines.
Then, the data collected is leveraged to provide a greater detailed awareness of the network's activity, allowing security experts to identify and respond to anomalies much quicker than later.
This process is called user behavior analysis; it complements cross-domain solutions that cannot be overseen. With the support of the analysis, the power plant operators can monitor employees' interactions with sensitive data and information and detect risks.
The employees' roles and credentials and the information they usually interact with are specifically recognized in the analysis. The employees' behavior is tracked to realize how they tend to interact, and each of them is given a score that depends on monitoring and control. For instance, an employee with a high-risk score cannot move data into a USB drive.
Securing the Supply Chain:
Securing the supply chain is a crucial aspect of strengthening preparedness. Innumerable factors generally work down the supply chain, assuming the level of defense will reduce the lower they go. Targeting the lower-tier contractors, less equipped to protect intellectual property, can also take the grid.
It is critical to monitor how the users interact with a risk-adaptive approach, which can be applied to the suppliers. The system will monitor daily, identify bad actions and espionage, and block leaks before they happen. It is crucial to hire bi-directional security, as well.
