Hack the Plant

 “One of my favorite topics is disaster resilience. We do quite a bit of work on what mutual assistance looks like and how to improve mutual assistance, how to rebuild systems once they've been hit by something terrible. My more recent interesting example was when a tornado had gone through a co-op and they were looking for what to do when their data server was just plain missing. It was Dorothy essentially over to somewhere else and they were asking us: Is it a data breach?” - Emma Stewart  For today's episode, I'm joined by Emma Stewart, Ph.D., Chief Scientist at the  National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). Electric coops are local, member-owned providers of affordable, reliable power. We discuss Dr. Stewart’s work supporting these co-ops in research, incident response, and managing the growing threat of ransomware attacks. What role do these electric co-ops play in our national energy supply? What core challenges do they have in staying resilient? Join us to learn more.

“What's been most concerning is the rise of wiper malware. Threat actors are no longer interested in hey we're going to lock up all of your data. We're going to encrypt everything and force you to pay a ransom and then maybe give you the decryption key. Now with wiper malware they're just completely wiping it. … This year there's been a total of 5 wiper malwares that has been targeting critical infrastructure. So I think everyone should be very aware of that.” -Roya Gordon For today's episode, I'm joined by Roya Gordon and Danielle Jablanski of Nozomi Networks, a firm that does inventory and situational awareness for operational technology industrial control systems. We discuss Nozomi’s research, the key kinds of threat intelligence globally, and the kinds of regulation  that are needed in today’s landscape of emerging threats to critical infrastructure. What emerging kinds of cyber attacks are the most troublesome? Join us to learn more.

“Agriculture and cybersecurity has just run under the radar. We're talking about something that's one fifth of the us economy right? This is this is a huge deal here in the US, and globally as well …  We can begin get the right expertise and collateral assembled so we're not the next ransomware victim or we have enough resiliency built into our operations that if we get we get hit and we get smoked our recovery will be easier and our our financial losses will be minimized.”  - Joe MarshallIn this episode of Hack the Plant, I’m joined by Joe Marshall, a security researcher for the Outreach Team at Cisco Talos, one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world. We discuss his work on cyber threats to agriculture, an industry which doesn’t have much information or training on cyber threat levels - and the likely cascading effects of the war in Ukraine for agricultural supply and food security worldwide. Join us to learn more.

“Most industrial economies only consume about 20% our total end use energy in the form of electricity. The rest, we consume by basically combusting fossil fuel … You could get all of your electricity from wind and solar and you've still only solved 20% of your carbon problem. A lot of the investments we've made at Energy Impact Partners are actually in electrification. Basically electrifying all that stuff that today is fueled directly by fossil fuel but in the future could be fueled by electricity.” - Andy LubershaneIn this episode of Hack the Plant, I’m joined by Andy Lubershane, Director of Research for Energy Impact Partners (EIP), a venture investment firm founded by a coalition of electricity and gas utilities. We discuss how energy companies themselves accelerate investments in clean energy such as electric, wind, and solar technologies - and the threats and challenges to this innovation from a cybersecurity perspective. Join us to learn more.

“You can only cover about 65% of the cybersecurity workforce demand with the existing workforce today. So we need to do something to address that gap. We need to either build that workforce or re-skill existing individuals that are looking to get into new fields. That's the approach that we're taking. So the need is there. We know that cyber risk is there. We know that adversaries are constantly re-skilling and skilling up as well. And we need to build a protective workforce around that.” - John EllisIn this episode of Hack the Plant, we feature John Ellis, who heads up the Industrial Cyber Alliances at Siemens Energy.  We discuss a new, industry-lead apprenticeship program he runs which focuses on critical infrastructure protection called CIISAp (short for: Cybersecurity & Industrial Infrastructure Security Apprenticeship Program). ICS village is one of the partners of this program, which is tackling the gap between shortage of skilled employees and the workforceHow is the cohort designed? How can we encourage collaboration tech companies, service companies, academia, and government to train the cyber workforce of the future?Join us to learn more.

“How do we talk about all the great things we're doing in our communities, in optimizing and trying to reduce carbon, and looking at new solutions and coming up with different technologies that can help advance to help keep prices down and keep reliability up. We're really spoiled at times in the US with how often we have our power. I've had to travel on all seven continents and had times where I didn't have power because the grid was down in other countries.” Dr. Noel SchulzIn this episode of Hack the Plant,  Dr. Noel Schulz of Washington State University joins us to talk about  innovations within the power industry. We discuss how our power systems (which we often take for granted) work, how to keep them secure, and innovations around the world in power supply. We also tackle the challenges of creating more diversity in harnessing carbon-neutral power sources…and the analogous issues of diversity and inclusion in industry.   How can we increase access to reliable power while reducing our carbon footprint? WhoJoin us as we discuss these questions, and more.

“I've been educating now for about eight years within the college system and that hands-on experiential learning is critical. When I have students do something that's like a scenario based off of different security assessments I've done or just weaving in some real world stuff, they thrive. They really get excited. They walk away from it energized.” - Dennis SkarrIn this episode of Hack the Plant, Dennis Skarr of Everett Community College joins us to talk about an industrial cybersecurity program for students he has recently built. He describes the interactive element that helps students get excited about cybersecurity - in turn inspiring the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.What success has this program had - and how, and why, should it be replicated across the country?Join us as we discuss these questions, and more.

Wind energy is one of the most rapidly growing energy generation sources in the US - how can these renewable systems stay resilient in the face of cyber attacks as the industry grows?In this episode, we hear from Megan Culler and Keith Mecham of Idaho National Labs (or INL). Megan Culler is a Power Engineer and Researcher; Keith Mecham is a Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Engineer.INL is a Federally funded research and development center (FFRDC): public-private partnerships which conduct research and development for the United States Government. They operate large infrastructure security programs that include wind, power, and telecommunication, as well as provide engineering and development support to the federal government.How does wind fit into our broader energy infrastructure? What threats does cybersecurity present to renewable energy? How can industry work tougher for policymakers to keep our systems secure?Join us as we discuss these questions, and more.“A big risk is people just don't understand the risks with these types of systems. I think that's starting to change, as we have larger and larger energy companies that already understand cybersecurity jumping into wind. We have projects from Royal Dutch Shell and BP and other energy companies. They're setting up huge wind farms, especially offshore. They understand cybersecurity because of their refineries and pipeline systems, better than a startup does. And we hope we see more of that bring some maturity to the industry.”-Keith Mecham

“Initially it was looking at specific types of attacks and thinking how those could be utilized against our systems, but then it became more sophisticated in thinking of how these attacks could be coordinated together by larger actors? ….  I think that regulation's role is more to draw attention and provide you with a base minimum, and then from there, it's the responsibility of those industries of those actors to step up and design the systems and implement true security.” - David CoherHow can our electrical grid system anticipate cybersecurity attacks? What is the nature of its vulnerability to attack, and what role can regulation play in securing our future?In this episode, we hear from David Coher, leader of Southern California Edison’s (SCE) Energy Contract Management team, which manages their long-term energy procurement contracts (approximately $4 billion, annually). David is an attorney, who moved from real estate litigation to SCE where he established programs for cybersecurity, participation in California’s Greenhouse Gas emissions Cap & Trade market, and Dodd-Frank compliance.We discussed how the power grid works and the changing landscape of keeping our energy grids safe from cyber attacks. We also explored the challenges of establishing a regulatory compliance program - in particular how to anticipate cybersecurity threats.What is next for SCE? What are some potential opportunities and threats on the horizon for the safety of our electric grid? Join us to learn more.

“We had to go out and talk to experts and just have the conversations and then be brutally honest about what those people were telling us about the problem. In many cases, we didn't even tell them what we were thinking about doing. We would call them up and say, "How are you securing your industrial control systems today?" and just listen.” - Joshua Steinman“We really learned to go in, us. Instead of imposing what we thought the problem would be for other asset owners, really let them tell us what their problems were. So that was probably one of the biggest takeaways during the customer discovery. And it was also great to hear that a lot of people had, I would say, some similar problems across different industry verticals. And everyone knew that there needed to be some change and wanted to see change. So that was also very refreshing for me.” -Brandon ParkWhat are the biggest challenges in critical infrastructure cybersecurity? In this episode of Hack the Plant, we hear from two entrepreneurs, Joshua Steinman & Brandon Park, who just did a 7 month long customer discovery process trying to understand where the key problems are now to keep our ICS systems safe from cyber threats.J​​oshua Steinman is a former naval officer, ICS cybersecurity startup founder, and cybersecurity policy senior director during the Trump administration.Brandon Park formerly worked at Amazon as a Security Engineer focused on securing ICS at scale. Prior to Amazon, he supported Department of Defense and Department of Energy projects.Their conversations spanned from ICS cybersecurity experts to operators to  executives at companies with large footprints in the space - and led to some surprising and unexpected insights that have led to the launch of something called Galvanick.How can this make our ICS more safe, reliable, or cyber-resilient? Join us to learn more.