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 the year 2022 and as is reflected in the article “Industrial Security 2022 in numbers”, cyberattacks in all industrial sectors have increased by around 30 % in the third quarter of 2022 and it is estimated that the number of organizations or industrial manufacturers victims of a cyberattack was around 40% in the last year. Especially in the industrial sector, the number of attacks has grown exponentially due to the massive introduction of IoT devices (it is expected to go from 13.5 to 21.5 million connected devices in three years) or more specifically about IIoT devices, which have been the main gateway for attacks as manufacturers have prioritized features and mass-production of devices over the security. In addition, this is compounded by planned obsolescence planned (increasingly present in this type of devices), increased interoperability and connectivity and the appearance of new types of malware and exploits which are much more effective.
In recent years, the concept of machine learning has gained more prominence, mainly driven by advances in parallel computing capacity. More and more developments, applications and programs are using these algorithms to provide systems with greater security, intelligence and independence. However, it’s rarely used in industrial environments, although some recent tests and developments prove its effectiveness, including in the scope of detection and prediction of cyber attacks.
Weaknesses in TCP protocol implementation in middleboxes could provide a means to carry out distributed reflection denial-of-service (DrDoS) attacks against any target.
Today, it is common to find SIEM deployed in the IT infrastructures of all kinds of organisations, to be able to monitor and analyse security alerts in applications, systems, network devices, etc. However, though time and resources are being invested in industrial environments, it is still unresolved.
Advances in security within control systems have brought us many of the security tools and services offered in IT for this environment. Until now, protection was based on reactive measures, acting only where there was evidence of the attack, but this trend changed with deployment of monitoring and the proactive defensive actions that this can provide.
The IDS, IPS and SIEM are equipment originally designed for IT environments but whose adaptation to TO environments has been forced in recent years due to a proliferation of attacks on industrial environments.