Industrial control systems (ICS) are the workhorses of our physical world, and becoming more internet-connected, more virtualized in many cases, and more remotely accessible by the day. Gartner Research indicates 5.5 million devices were added per day in 2016, a pace that leads to an estimated 21+ billion internet-connected “things” running our world by 2020.

Here’s your situation - industrial security is a hot topic today and management has decided to assign you the task to take an assessment and come up with a plan to protect the company from… well, they didn’t exactly say. Perhaps some budget support was provided for this task and perhaps not. Regardless of funding, it is understood that the priority is still to keep production running while you put your plan into action.

There is an elephant in the industrial infrastructure control room. Much of the equipment within our US critical infrastructure sectors is at risk of aging out, needing replacement or upgrade, yet still in production use. When upgrading to state-of-the-art technology, water and wastewater treatment plants have to assess legacy systems and also project needs for the next 10, 20 or even 30 years. This requires the use of future-proof infrastructure components flexible enough to adapt to network changes or growth.

Self-described “Mr. Potatohead,” aka Sean McBride, gave a keynote address on Thursday, October 13, 2016 in Orlando, Florida at Belden’s annual Industrial Ethernet Infrastructure Design Seminar (IEIDS).

Risks to the control levels of industrial networks have been on the rise – and yet many are not aware of the many vulnerabilities and weaknesses these environments have. The SANS 2016 State of ICS Security Survey indicates this is a growing concern of those surveyed.