You have likely never worried about the possibility of a high school geek doing some programming that affects your home water quality. Well, neither had I until I learnt that some municipal networks have no security between the network their schools use and the one that runs their water/wastewater facility.

One of the indicators that it's time to update your network design is when troubleshooting issues take too long and having a significant impact on production. That was one of the issues Johnson Controls' Automotive Experience Group was facing when it decided its "one size fits all" flat network infrastructure had to change.

You may have heard some buzz in the press (both US and International) about the release of the Cybersecurity Framework Draft from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). However, you may not know much about its background. And you probably don't know what it may mean to you as a control or security professional. This blog post will give you a high level overview of the genesis of this document and some handy points of reference. 

In a recent blog article – Chicken, Egg, and Chicken Omelette with Salsa – Dale Peterson is squawking like a rooster. Nothing new, but this time his message is scrambled. He once again referred to me as a SCADA Apologist, though this time he also labeled me the “salsa” that accompanies a chicken omelette. While I responded to his opinion in my January 30 blog post, I’d like to revisit this spicy topic.

Recently there was a thread on SCADASEC news, a restricted access critical infrastructure mailing list, about the challenges of firewalling BACnet networks. If you only work in the industrial automation space, you may not have heard of this protocol, but it is big in building automation. Regardless, the discussion around BACnet applies to many industrial protocols.