Feb 13, 2019
By Honeywell
Removable USB media devices such as flash drives are commonplace and convenient when it comes to sharing information – those tiny flash drives can hold a lot of data.
And, it turns out, a lot of malicious threats.
At industrials, USBs are often used by employees and contractors visiting sites to share and transfer files and update patches.
Our new research shows that they also pose a significant cybersecurity threat to industrial networks. While monitoring 50 industrial plants in the energy, oil and gas, chemical and paper and pulp industries across the world for cybersecurity threats through our new Secure Media Exchange (SMX) solution, we caught Stuxnet, Mirai and WannaCry lurking in the USB drives.
Here’s a sample of the findings:
44% detected and blocked at least one security issue
This confirms that USBs remain a significant vector for industrial threats. It has become easy for hackers to spread malware, ransomware attacks, steal confidential data and bring down production sites through USBs.
26% of those threats were major
These weren’t just blips – they could lead to significant disruption by causing operators to lose visibility or control of their operations.
15% of threats were high-profile and well-known
Odds are you’ve heard of these worms and viruses, including Stuxnet (2 percent), Mirai (6 percent), Triton (2 percent) and WannaCry (1 percent). They’ve existed for a long time and they were attempting to enter industrial facilities via removable storage devices in high density.
9% were designed to exploit USBs
Most of the malware detected were Trojans (55 percent), followed by bots (11 percent) and hacktools (6 percent).
And 9 percent were designed to directly exploit USB protocol and interface weaknesses, making them especially effective.
Read the full report here.
Climate change and its associated impacts will play a central role in Canada's electricity future. In fact, the Conference Board of Canada estimates that approximately $347.5 billion will need to be invested in electricity infrastructure to maintain the system reliability we have today. Making smart investments now can improve the system and help to avoid more severe climate related costs in the future.
By Blake Marchand
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The Blue e+ series of cooling units are now also available in a stainless-steel version as standard off the shelf. Rittal will be presenting these energy-efficient units for the first time at SPS IPC Drives. They offer cooling outputs ranging from 1.6 kW to 5.8 kW. This improvement is particularly suitable for applications in the food and beverage industry, as well as in the process industry, where high levels of corrosion protection are called for.
In a recent interview with the The National Post, Electricity Human Resources Canada CEO Michelle Branigan said the need for workers in Canada’s electricity industry is “extremely critical.”
