Secure Operations Technology

Book excerpt: IT-SEC protects the information. SEC-OT protects physical, industrial operations from information, more specifically from attacks embedded in information. When the consequences of compromise are unacceptable - unscheduled downtime, impaired product quality and damaged equipment - software-based IT-SEC defences are not enough. Secure Operations Technology (SEC-OT) is a perspective, a methodology, and a set of best practices used at secure industrial sites. SEC-OT demands cyber-physical protections - because all software can be compromised. SEC-OT strictly controls the flow of information - because all information can encode attacks. SEC-OT uses a wide range of attack capabilities to determine the strength of security postures - because nothing is secure. This book documents the Secure Operations Technology approach, including physical offline and online protections against cyber attacks and a set of twenty standard cyber-attack patterns to use in risk assessments.