Segmentados Desarrollo

The aim of Cybersecurity Highlights service is to gather all relevant news related to cybersecurity through the year. This is the article that summarizes those news that have been more important in 2017.

Denial-of-service attacks are a type of cyber-attack which consists on reducing or cancelling altogether the capacity of servers or other computing resources to provide service. A denial-of-service attack can occur in different scenarios, such as overloading online services by mass request sending or exploiting vulnerabilities of programs or services in order to suspend function totally or partially. In most of such attacks, attackers use a wide range of techniques and tools to hide their identities, which makes it especially challenging to find the culprits.

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has published the 10 most critical web application risks, 2017 edition, which points injection attacks as the greater security risk once again, as in the 2013 and 2010 editions.

The protection of critical and strategic infrastructures in our country is a task that must be tackled by all the agents involved in a public-private cooperation framework.

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.

After having analysed the "why" behind the cybersecurity capacities evaluation model in the first entry dedicated to the C4V model and after having explained how to carry out an appropriate management of risks in the value chain in the second edition, this third edition is dedicated to explaining how to carry out an evaluation of ourselves.

The industry is increasingly calling for experts in security, and the business world is not capable of meeting that demand due to the lack of trained professionals. This is not a problem that solely affects Spain; it also affects the whole of Europe and the U.S.A. But, what is it that is asked of industrial security experts?

Wireless technologies are becoming more and more prominent everywhere, and also in industrial environments, driven by all other environments where the use of wireless communication technologies is widespread.

The Simple Network Management Protocol or SNMP, used in most industrial devices, went from an information exchange protocol related to device configuration to an actual configuration control protocol. Manufacturers add far too many functionalities for SNMP in their devices. These functionalities are often unknown by operators so they do not pay much attention to the hardening of this protocol.

The architecture of our industrial control systems is not as static as it was some years ago. The adapting of new standards, or simply trying to improve the security of our industrial networks, creates the need to introduce one or various firewalls within our network. Thinking about having to change a network's architecture, the IP of our devices, tests, etc. when introducing a new firewall often leads to the bad decision to not install it. But, do we know about transparent firewalls and how they can be installed with almost no impact in our network? These solutions have advanced a lot in the industry and may be a true plus to our security.

The evolution of industrial systems towards an almost complete automation entails new challenges in communications. New functionalities acquired by the process, such as the use of digital relays to manage emergency interruptions, are transmitted by the communications network and this cannot fail. Given this need for zero tolerance to any failure, the redundancy offered by the HSR and PRP protocols can be a key factor.

Remote accesses to control devices from networks outside the company are a major problem but, what about direct accesses made thanks to the accessibility of the device? This article explains the concept of hardware hacking and the hazards for the industry.