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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.

In recent years, indicators of compromise have become the best way of exchanging information when it comes to managing an incident. But, do we really know how to manage an indicator of compromise? The aim of an indicator of compromise is to map the information that is received or extracted during the analysis of an incident. This is done in such a way that it can be reused by other investigators or affected people, in order to discover the same evidence in their systems and to be able to determine if they have been compromised or not.

The problems originating from the application of patches in an industrial setting have consequently led to them being rejected by the operators. For years they were practically abandoned, but thanks to the support from security companies and IT departments they are now receiving their due credit.

Today, we are unable to picture cars without a hands-free system, TVs which are not smart and a bunch of other devices without information processing systems. This can be achieved thanks to embedded systems, the use of which entails security risks.

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 year 2017 has come to an end, maintaining the trend of previous years, we have witnessed an increase in the number of vulnerabilities published affecting industrial control systems. Fortunately, companies are making greater efforts to prevent attacks and mitigate risks. For this new year 2018, a similar scenario is expected in which industrial cybersecurity still increases its importance.

The constant pressure from operating costs and the halt in investments due to the crisis have made it so industrial systems have had to improve the administration of their assets in order to lower product prices, thus recurring to IT solutions. The result is that industry is changing in the way its processes are managed and operated in order to integrate them in business.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has started to become part of daily life in society: intelligent homes, intelligent education, intelligent healthcare, wearable devices, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and other industries make great use of this technology, with it playing a key role in the digital transformation and the hyper-connection of their elements.