The industrial environment, especially the energy sector, is one of sectors that is suffering the most from cyber-attacks. This trend has been increasing in recent years, as this is one of the most information-sensitive sectors and can cause major problems, both economically and socially.
One of the best examples of malware attacks is BlackEnergy. This malware became known for being able to compromise several electricity distributors on 23 December 2015, causing households in the Ivano-Frankvisk region of Ukraine (a population of around 1.5 million) to be without electricity.
For this reason, due to seriousness of this type of cyberattacks, it is necessary to continue researching and investing in industrial cybersecurity, to reduce the damage caused by this type of cyber-attack in industrial environments.
The automotive sector is currently moving towards electric consumption, as society is becoming more and more aware of the problems that environmental pollution can cause.
One of the big challenges of this trend is how to charge electric vehicles, for which charging points are currently used.
But like most of today's technological devices, they will also need to have access to an Internet connection in order to be able to monitor in real time the use of the station, the customer's banking information, etc.
For this reason, in this article we want to talk about the different risks or cyber-attacks that these charging points may suffer and the problems they may cause, as this is a very important sector for society and one that is capable of managing very sensitive information
In recent years, the constant technological evolution has made possible a large number of advances that would have been unthinkable years ago. In industrial environments, one of the latest developments that promises to stand out and is here to stay are virtual PLC.
The virtualization of these controllers will make it possible to decouple the hardware from the software, i.e. the software will be installed in the engineering stations, while the hardware will remain in another area outside the production area.
One of the most important activities in the industry is the industrial maintenance because it could extend the service life of devices. This activity has always been more mechanically oriented, but currently it might talk a new type of maintenance because the new industry technologies and increase of cyberattacks.
This maintenance is more related with the informatic world and in this article will be able to see the principals characteristics and the actions to be taken to ensure that it is carried out correctly.
The programming of PLCs is a fundamental part of the initial phases when building and designing industrial plants. About that environment, the company will base all its operations in that environment making the configuration of these controllers a critical element. When it comes to programming these devices there are a series of steps and best practices that take advantage of the native functionalities available and that involve little or no need to resort to a PLC programmer, protecting the device in a simple way with minimum spend on resource.
In order to increase security levels in OT networks, there are now solutions that monitor networks, devices and configurations, actively looking for anomalies and possible security flaws and intrusions that could take place. However, there are other types of attacks on ICS that are carried out on a completely different plane, where anomaly analysis systems can’t reach. These are attacks on analog sensors.
Computers used in control systems to perform a particular process usually have high costs due to their specialisation for a very specific task. But is it possible to manage a process with a small-dimension mass-produced generic system? In some cases, yes, and this is being increasingly demonstrated by low-cost hardware available to both industry and individuals.