How Three Australian Organisations are Protecting Critical Industrial Infrastructure from Threats through Effective Risk Resilience, Response and Management

Like every system that is networked to the Internet, industrial control systems must be properly secured. The problem is that industry control systems security is often overlooked because it is tied to mission critical systems and infrastructure. As such, disruptions are often avoided, which includes taking these systems down for security updates. 

This gives rise to the problem of having an industrial control system that is out of date, unpatched, and vulnerable to attacks. Most industrial control systems also do not have computing power or have very limited resources used for computing. This means that they would not be able to run antimalware and antivirus software.

With connectivity to the outside world growing, cyber attacks on industrial computers constitute an extremely dangerous threat, as these types of incidents can cause material losses and production downtime for a whole system. Moreover, industrial enterprises knocked out of service can seriously undermine a region’s social welfare, ecology and macroeconomics. Not surprisingly, ICS security is, therefore, becoming more and more important.

Ahead of the ICS Security Summit 2019 we take a look at the strategies three Australian organisations – Sydney Water, Western Power and Coopers Brewery - are harnessing to update and secure their industrial control security systems for modern operations.