Hack the Plant

In this episode, Bryson Bort is joined by Paul Shaver, Global OT Security Practice Lead at Mandiant / Google Cloud to discuss the cyber threat landscape. How did Paul’s military background play a role in his decision to start working with control systems? What is the difference between an advanced persistent threat and a regular threat? What does Paul think is the best way to protect against documented threats from nation-state actors?“I think if we're not doing a better job of protecting critical infrastructure, protecting our assets, any one of the nation state actors could cause that level of mass scale outage or destruction of capability. It comes down to being better prepared to protect these environments,” Paul said. Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant. Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.

Claroty is a cybersecurity company that helps organizations to secure cyber-physical systems across industrial (OT), healthcare (IoMT), and enterprise (IoT) environments: the Extended Internet of Things (XIoT). In this episode, Bryson Bort sits down with Claroty director of research and industrial control system (ICS) vulnerability expert Sharon Brizinov to discuss everything ICS.What are the most common vulnerabilities threatening ICS security? What’s the impact of cybersecurity controls standardization? And if he could wave a magic wand, what is one thing he’d change in the ICS industry? “Don't expose ICS equipment over the Internet,” Sharon said. “That's my wish. To eliminate all the ICS Internet-exposed devices.”Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant. Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology. 

Psymetis creates Operational Technology (OT) security solutions that quickly and prevent electric grid outages and catastrophic infrastructure failures. Psymetis’ Werewolf system provides condition monitoring and threat mitigation for the power grid, detecting cyberattacks, equipment failures, and physical damage in real-time. In this episode of Hack the Plant, Bryson sits down with Psymetis CEO Robert Shaughnessy to discuss his work with Psymetis, challenges to innovation in the private sector, and the role of government in developing new technologies. What ecosystem problem is Psymetis solving? How is the federal government involved? What threats do our critical infrastructure systems face? How is China involved?“We're not talking about shooting wars, we're talking about wars where adversaries–to include economic adversaries–can have advantage,”  Shaughnessy said. “As we're looking out over the next couple of years… there's a lot of frightening indicators that want us to plan for these events, knowing the capabilities of our tier one adversaries.” Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant. Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.

As America’s Cyber Defense Agency and the National Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) leads the national effort to understand, manage, and reduce risk to the cyber and physical infrastructure that Americans rely on every day. In this episode of Hack the Plant, Bryson sits down with CISA Director Jen Easterly to discuss her work on leading CISA’s critical infrastructure mission, implementing efforts to make products Secure by Design, and working with private companies to combat ransomware.How has CISA’s role evolved since 2018? How do they advance critical infrastructure protection and cyber defense? What are Director Easterly’s priorities for 2024? And if she could wave a magic wand, what is one thing she would change? “We need transparency so that we can all work together to protect the ecosystem, because the actors are not ever going to fight fair,” Easterly said. “We need all the collective strength of the community to keep Americans safe and secure.”Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant. Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.

I’m joined by Jesse Whaley, the Chief Information Security Officer at Amtrak, for this episode of Hack the Plant.  Amtrak is  the nation's largest passenger rail service provider and one of the most complex and critical transportation systems in the world. We discuss what it takes to oversee Amtrak’s digital assets and infrastructure, and what it takes to keep them secure. “The company had a safety culture. Before every meeting before every job site that workers went out to on the railroad to do work. They did safety briefings … I got alignment on hey, this should be our standard company safety and security briefing, but with a whole pillar of safety as being cybersecurity. Since I did that, before every meeting, before every crew goes out to a job site, before every activity, there is a safety and security briefing, and it follows this essential template which highlights and reinforces cybersecurity.”We also cover the impressive talent pipeline and  team and workforce development programs Jesse put into place to staff Amtrak’s cybersecurity efforts. Join us to learn more.

I’m joined by Dan Ricci, founder of the ICS Advisory Project, for this episode of Hack the Plant.The ICS Advisory Project is a free, open-source platform that helps asset owners across 16 critical infrastructure sectors stay secure by identifying threats in their environments.“I saw a gap in the community. There's good data that's coming at us…but no one did anything to take and make that data more digestible through visualization. So I decided, okay, well, I'm just going to do it now. I’m going to take the the data that I have been cleaning up and monitoring for like the past two years, and I'm going to put it together and visualize it, trying to build a tool that's more practical and usable by that asset owner, who may not have a cybersecurity background.”We discuss how data visualization translates into more accessible information for the ICS operators on the ground who need the information - and how the data in the platform is maintained.Join us for an interesting - if technical - discussion about how data from CISA and other agencies can be utilized by asset owners through ICS Advisory’s platform.

Jason Healey, Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs, discusses 25 years of White House cyber policies, the evolving nature of threats, heavy-handed regulations on critical infrastructure, and the shift of cybersecurity responsibility. They also explore collaboration between the technical and policy communities and ideal changes to the internet and cybersecurity.

I’m joined by David Patrick Emmerich, the Principal Cyber-Physical Range Architect at the University of Illinois, for this episode of Hack the Plant. We’re here today to talk about RADICS, a DARPA project. RADICS stands for Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems.  We discuss David’s role in building automated data collection and set up simulations and testing, and how the process of doing vulnerability discovery for physical assets helps asset owners.“  ‘These are ways that an attacker could get around it.’ ‘These are where your blind spots might be’ … We help them understand that so that they can better improve the security of their systems. Or go back to their boards or their management and say ‘these are the tools we need’ or ‘this is the equipment we need and this is why we need it to better improve our security posture.’ Their systems are already critical, but as they become even more critical.”  We delve into challenges of securing operational technology (OT) for asset owners, different kinds of threats they face, and more technical projects that RADICS ignited.Join us for an interesting - if technical - discussion to learn more about how physical systems interact with data to support real-time threat response.

For today’s episode, I’m joined by Lesley Carhart. Lesley is the Director of Incident Response for North America at the industrial cybersecurity company Dragos, Inc. She leads incident response and proactively hunts for threats in customers’ ICS environments. Lesley was the incident response team lead at Motorola Solutions, and retired from the United States Air Force. Today, we dive into the kinds of active threats out there that incident response deals with:“We see insider cases, both intentional and unintentional insider cases. We see a lot of crime ware. So crime actors are getting smarter about where they're doing things like ransomware attacks. They're less haphazard. There's probably less overall attacks now, but they're more smartly performed. So they're targeting more critical industries. They are targeting people who they think will have to pay…And then there's still adversary groups who are more state style, who are building their capabilities to launch attacks in the future. And conducting espionage, preparing to do sabotage. And that's still happening and they're getting better at it.” - Lesley CarhartWe explore the challenges of securing operational technology (OT) for asset owners, different kinds of threats, and the process of doing vulnerability discovery for these physical assets.What do asset owners in critical infrastructure need to secure in the first place - and why is this so challenging to stay on top of? What kind of incident response plan is needed for OT in an industrial environment? Join us to learn more. 

For today’s episode, I’m joined by Zach Tudor, the Associate Laboratory Director at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). INL is a Department of Energy national laboratory, is the nation's leading center for nuclear energy research and development. Zach is responsible for INL’s Nuclear Nonproliferation, Critical Infrastructure Protection and Defense Systems missions.We discuss how INL partners with the private sector to test challenges to critical infrastructure, and the cutting edge work INL is doing to secure the next generation of critical infrastructure."Honeywell has been one of the big players that has been working with us for quite a while. And Hitashi. Schneider Electric.  They will provide us some of their systems that are critical in energy critical infrastructure, industrial control systems, and we will tear it down in a methodological process that we have developed here…[to] start building an understanding of where the risks are and the supply chain of our critical energy infrastructure." - Zach TudorOther topics we cover: What work is INL doing to secure the next generation of critical infrastructure?  How can we make our critical infrastructure systems more resilient?  How is data security managed with emerging technologies such as 5G, or self-driving cars? What strategies should the government and private industry use to categorize risk and mitigate it in a way that actually has measurable impact?   Join us to learn more.