Critical infrastructures and operational technology systems will face increasing threats as they move toward common standards.
Nations will need to beef up security of their critical information infrastructures (CII) and operational technology (OT) systems as a move toward common standards gives hackers greater ability to scale up their attacks.
Increased digitalization and connectivity have fuelled automation in OT sectors, such as power, oil and gas, water, and manufacturing. These industries also gain greater efficiency through adopting common protocols and operating systems.
However, as these sectors move from heterogeneous environments toward standardized software stacks, the homogeneity allows threat adversaries to achieve better scalability, said Robert M. Lee, CEO of US-based cybersecurity vendor Dragos, which specializes in OT and industrial controls systems.
This will lead to more repeatable and cross-industry OT attack toolkits, he noted. Coupled with a wider attack surface from increased connectivity, OT networks face greater odds of falling victim to an attack, cautioned Lee, who was speaking Tuesday via video link at the OT Cybersecurity Expert Panel Forum held in Singapore.
Even now, OT sectors are increasingly targeted. Just five years ago in 2018, Dragos identified six to seven state-actor groups that were explicitly focused on OT and industrial control systems. This number has since climbed to at least 22 groups and more state-actor networks are realizing the viability of targeting OT sectors, said Lee, who has testified at several US congressional briefings.
While the general IT threat landscape has seen higher frequency of attacks than OT, there are more costly consequences if OT systems are compromised, potentially impacting lives and economies, he said.
There were 605 ransomware attacks against industrial organizations last year, up 87% over the previous year, according to Dragos.
Amid the evolving threat landscape, it is imperative that governments work to beef up the resiliency of their CII and OT sectors.
Singapore in 2021 updated its cybersecurity strategy with heightened focus on OT, providing a framework to build up skillsets and technical competencies. The national security roadmap also included efforts to work with CII operators to better safeguard local critical infrastructures.
However, the country still needs to further ramp up such efforts as the threat OT sectors face is “unrelenting and constantly evolving”, said David Koh, cybersecurity commissioner and chief executive of Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency (CSA), which has hosted the annual forum since 2021.
