An unjustified assumption underlies the cybersecurity of manufacturing and industrial processes. You can’t be cybersecure or safe if you can’t trust your measurements. The lack of embedded cybersecurity in Level 0 devices forces a fundamental reexamination of current regulatory frameworks such as NERC CIP, ISA/IEC 62443-4-2, NIST SP 800-82, API, AWWA, NIS2, CRA, KRITIS, NEI-0809, […]
Category: Critical Infrastructure
After more than 18 years, Aurora is still an existential threat to critical infrastructures
Control system hardware cybersecurity issues continue to be out of the cybersecurity mainstream. Protective relay issues are an example where there are hardware cyber issues that cannot be detected by network security monitoring. These issues include manipulating registers in the relays and remotely opening and closing the relays. Aurora incidents are a good example of […]
Recollections from 9/11
The week of 9/11, I was in Houston along with 40,000 others for the ISA Expo. On 9/9 I was made an ISA Fellow. On 9/10, we held two sessions on CONTROL SYSTEM (there was no such term as OT at the time) cybersecurity that were well attended by the engineers with minimal IT attendance […]
What have we learned since Stuxnet – when it comes to control system cyber security not much
For SCADASec Fifteen years ago, I wrote the blog – “Malicious vs unintentional cyber incidents – why it is necessary to include unintentional incidents” This blog was written weeks before Stuxnet and its impact on control systems and centrifuge damage were made public. Stuxnet demonstrated that cyberattacks could be made to look like equipment malfunctions […]
NERC Sensors
The fallacy that the electric grid is cybersecure by meeting the NERC CIPs is finally being exposed. Situational awareness is based on process sensor input that is incorrectly assumed to be uncompromised, authenticated, and correct. Because process sensors use non-routable protocols, they have not been considered to be NERC Cyber Assets. Depending on the situation, […]
Network tabletop exercises don’t include engineering and plant operations
If engineering and operations are left out of cybersecurity training and exercises, it’s no surprise that they’d also tend to be overlooked during the pressure of an actual incident. The complexity in manufacturing and industrial control systems is not understood by network security. Simply restarting IT and OT networks from a “golden backup” is not […]
Does anyone tell the truth anymore?
The more important question that you might want to ask is: *who* should you trust for your information? The recent (so-called) malware attack at the Vermont electric utility on 30-Dec-2016 (Friday) demonstrates that, due to political agendas, that intelligence information may be manipulated. Throughout most of Friday, DHS (and its various departments) and FBI, hosted […]
There have been many publicly documented control system cyberattacks that caused physical damage
Sinclair Koelemij stated in his July 20, 2025 article the only documented control system cyberattack that directly caused physical damage was Stuxnet. He is not the only one who feels this way. However, there have been numerous cases in every sector where there have been publicly documented control system cyberattacks that caused physical damage. There […]
Why won’t NERC identify control system incidents as being cyber-related?
NERC publishes Lessons Learned documents to provide industry participants with technical and understandable information that helps them maintain the reliability of the bulk electric system. NERC has a history of not identifying control system incidents as being cyber-related. NERC issued two Lessons Learned documents in 2025: “Loss of Monitoring and Control Due to a Communication […]
Misguided response to the Norwegian Dam and Oldsmar “cyberattacks”
Not all control system cyber incidents are malicious cyberattacks. They can be accidents or errors, too. In their haste to find OT cyberattacks, the OT cybersecurity community, including regulators, continue to jump to conclusions about what are OT cyberattacks while at the same time ignoring incidents that don’t look like cyber incidents they are used […]