Unsolicited Response

Dave Whitehead, CEO of SEL, joins Dale on the show to talk about:

• The new SEL printed circuit board (PCB) factory in Idaho. Why they bucked the trend and did this. The benefits, the ROI, and more.
• SEL's position on providing SBOMs to customers and their internal use of SBOMs - Where leaders tend to go wrong.
• Substation shootings
• Market acceptance of SEL's Blueframe virtual platform

Links

• Dave Whitehead's previous appearance on the Unsolicited Response Show
• Want to advertise on the Unsolicited Response Show in 2024?

Dale and Nicole Sundin of Axio discuss CRQ, how to deal with the precision challenge, Axio's prioritization of impact, ransomware on IT affecting operations as an example, and more.

They also discuss UX and the single pane of glass.

Links

Axio web site

Former Congressman and Presidential candidate Will Hurd is a rarity with a tech background in someone who was elected to the US Congress, and even rarer in someone running for President. Will graduated Texas A&M with Computer Science degree. Worked as a Senior Adviser to the cybersecurity company FusionX, which was acquired by Accenture. More recently he was on the board of OpenAI.

This is probably one of the most technical interviews with a Presidential candidate you will hear. Dale asks Will:

• How he would rate CISA's performance (he co-sponsored the bill to create CISA)?
• Does the Executive Branch have the authority required to secure critical infrastructure?
• His views on Cyber Command / DoD policy of "defend forward"?
• The current level of Congress's technical literacy?
• What type of cybersecurity legislation, if any, Congress should pass?

Patrick Miller of Ampere Industrial Security joins Dale to discuss the three big stories of the quarter and give their win, fail and prediction.

Stories

1. US National Cybersecurity Strategy Implementation Plan + CISA 2024-2026 Strategic Plan
2. The cybersecurity / OT cybersecurity vendor market news. We just had Cisco buy Splunk, plus the Dragos "extension", and SCADAfence selling to Honeywell. Seems like some tough times.
3. Ransomware again … Port of Nagoya, Clorox, hospitals, CISA Ransomware Vulnerability Notification Service

Links

• S4x24 Ticket Sales
• Ampere Industrial Security
• Critical Assets Podcast

• How DER will deal with the complex, large number of users and stakeholders PKI environment.
• The Sunspec device security specification and the benefits of a limited, key set of security controls.
• What is the role of government regulation to solve DER security issues?
• The potential power of the utility companies to levy requirements and be a choke point for access.
• The Patch Act, FDA and DER.
• shift left and product liability due to security flaws
• and more

Marina Krotofil recently published the paper Industrial Control Systems: Engineering Foundations and Cyber-Physical Attack Lifecycle which is a detailed paper on cyber attacks that cause a physical impact on the system being monitored and controlled. It took Marina 1.5 years to write this paper, which is more accurately described as a short book. We discuss:

• the work she is doing to help Ukrainian critical infrastructure security during wartime
• what got Marina interested in cyber-physical security 10+ years ago
• the current understanding of cyber-physical in the OT security community
• Chapter 2: Engineering Foundations as a great intro for those in IT to understand basic automation principles
• Chapter 3: Very detailed explanation of a specific process (we don't spend much time on this)
• The Cyber-Physical Attack Lifecycle with emphasis on the Damage Loop. "Plant shutdown is risky for the attacker as it may instigate an investigation"
• Chapter 4.6 is a great conclusion

Steve Springett is the Chair of the OWASP CycloneDX Core Working Group. CycloneDX is one of the two main machine readable formats that SBOMs are being created in, although CycloneDX can capture all sorts of BOMs.

In this episode we assume listeners know what a SBOM is and why it might be desired by a vendor and asset owner. The beginning of the show we cover some basics of CycloneDX

If you know the basics, skip to 14:24 where we get into the details

• Statistics on who is generating and using CycloneDX SBOMs, and the impact of governement regulations on the use.
• Steve's view of the NTIA Minimum Elements for SBOM v. CycloneDX elements.
• How CycloneDX tries to capture the completeness of and confidence in the SBOM.
• The naming problem. CPE, CVE, NVD, SWID, PURL and more. Steve describes the problem and what he thinks is the way forward.
• Vulnerabilities ... and why Steve thinks VEX is a missed opportunity.
• Outdated component analysis (this could be very useful in a procurement decision)
• and more

Links

CycloneDX document: Authoritative Guide To SBOM

ICS-Patch (what to patch when in ICS / risk based decision tree)

S4x24 CFP

At S4x23 Andy Bochman gave a Main Stage performance on the OT Cybersecurity / Climate Nexus. It's a new idea and Dale wanted to dig into it and understand it better. The discussion looks at where there is a nexus/connection/overlap and where there may be parallel efforts where each side might learn from the other.

Links

Andy Bochman S4x23 Video

Slide used in this episode

Earlier episode with Dale and Andy discussing CCE

S4x24 Call For Presentations

Gus Serino worked at a large water utility before joining Dragos in 2019. We're talking water sector so it's obligatory to start with Oldsmar (2:20), but we don't talk cyber. Instead we go through the physical portion of the water system assuming the attacker is able to issue the command to the pump to dump a lot of sodium hydroxide into the water system and what would likely happen. Importantly Gus identifies the simple, unhackable solution to this threat. A hard wired PH sensor that will shut off the pump regardless of the commands from the ICS.

After Oldsmar Dale and Gus discuss:

• how small and medium water systems should approach cyber risk
• the greater challenge to large water systems
• the EPA's early steps on cybersecurity and future regulation - surprises in moving from a water utility to Dragos
• what Gus's new I&C Secure company is doing 

This is a solo-sode where Dale reviews two articles from July with comments on comments and additional thoughts. The final section is a must listen if you are going to submit to speak on the S4x24 Stage. The times below are so you can skip to what you are interested in.

1:29 One-Way Data Diodes and School Zones

10:15 SAIDI: What Cyber Incidents Should Be Excluded From Metrics

16:05 Do's and Don'ts For Your S4x24 CFP Submission

Links

Subscribe to Dale's Friday ICS Security News & Notes

Info and Links for the S4x24 CFP

• Why HD decided to run back into the cybersecurity startup world?
• How it started as a solo shop with HD writing all the code.
• How HD things Shodan and RunZero are different.
• What technique does RunZero use to 'scan'. A term that many fear in OT. Check out their approach to 'fragile devices'.
• The OT reaction to this type of scanning.
• What role uses the RunZero product?

Dale is often critical of the US Government's efforts and programs to address OT cyber risk. So it's a pleasure to highlight a program that is working.

Samantha Ravich, Chair of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, joins Dale to discuss the US Department of Energy's OT Defender Fellowship Program.

They begin by describing the program, its goals, what are ideal candidates for the program, and the early results from the first few cohorts. Then Timothy Pospisil of Nebraska Public Power District and part of the 2022 OT Defender Fellowship cohort joins the show to discuss his experience in the program.

At the end we discuss how this could be expanded to address water, critical manufacturing and other sectors.

Link

OT Defender Fellowship Program

• Dow's in house developed DCS and SIS: MOD
• Eric's top trend from 2022: The value of open automation and the Open Process Automation Forum
• ISA/IEC 62433
• Eric's view they are "primarily engineering standards"
• What Eric thinks about the safety / security analogies
• His experience in being ISA President in the first year of COVID
• ISA as "the home of automation"
• Has ISA lost mindshare on ICS security standards to the US Government and training to SANS

Mark Hyman of Verge Management Group joins Dale to discuss the big 3 stories of Q2 along with their win, fail and predication.

Big Stories

1. The OT Security Layoffs (Mark is a recruiter specialized in ICS/OT security)
2. Still No US National Cyber Director?
3. The Merck NotPetya Insurance Claim Ruling

Plus they both have a win, fail and prediction at the end.

Josh Corman is the VP of Cyber Safety Strategy at Claroty, was the Chief Strategist of the CISA COVID Task Force, and founder of I Am The Cavalry. Josh and I dive into Healthcare Security, SBOMs and other topics. 

• Can OT in healthcare be treated in a similar way as the factory, power plant, water treatment plant, ... ? 
• The first fatality due to a cyber attack on a hospital.
• Should we be focusing our efforts on reducing the impact if ransomware hits a healthcare facility? What is the equivalent to a steel reinforced cockpit door?
• The PATCH Act (included in the Omnibus bill passed in Dec 2022) requiring medical device manufactures to provide a SBOM and a patching program. What is it? What will be the impact of this? (BTW, Josh changed my mind on this as a start to a long term impact)
• Will the PATCH Act provisions delay approval of medical devices?
• How accurate and complete are vendor generated SBOMs today? How will this be solved?
• What will be the impact of SBOM mandates?
• Differing views on the importance to society of attacks and outages in the agriculture / food industry
• I Am The Cavalry turns 10.

We will need to have Josh back for a Part 2.

This episode is a replay of a lively panel from the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore's OT Cybersecurity Expert Panel (OTCEP) last year. It begins with a great introduction to the Top 20 Secure PLC Coding Practices by Sarah Fluchs. At the 35 minute mark the panel discussion begins. There was a lot more disagreement and back and forth than the typical panel. This gives you a variety of points of view and positions to consider.

Paul Griswold moderated the panel of Dr. Ong Chen Hui, Joel Langill, Sarah Fluchs and Dale Peterson.

Links

• Top 20 Secure PLC Coding Practices
• 2023 OTCEP Event Page, August 22 - 23 in Singapore
• S4x24 Call For Presentations

How much does a security control reduce cyber risk? What control or mix of controls provides the most efficient cyber risk reduction? Tough questions that a team of researchers at INL and Sandia tried to answer in a project.

Two of the researchers, Jay Johnson of Sandia and Jake Gentle of INL, join Dale on the show to talk about the metrics and results. The project was Cyber Resilience for Wind Installations, but the metrics and results are applicable to every sector. We get into the weeds on this episode and discuss:

• how they created the test environment
• the two attack scenarios (and why only two and how easy it would be to expand)
• the physical resilience score
• the cyber resilience score
• the results from four different mixes of security controls
• areas for further testing and improvement
• and a tiny bit about trying to calculate an Expected Benefit from Cybersecurity Investment, which is a bit like ROI and how much money to spend.

Links

• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBLbLUFKzIc

• IEEE Access Journal Paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10043706

• POWER magazine article: https://www.powermag.com/cyber-resilience-for-wind-power-installations/

• 2-page flyer: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367074443_Cyber_Resilience_for_Wind_Installations_A_Cyber_Resilient_Reference_Architecture

• Final project report: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368599508_Hardening_Wind_Energy_Systems_from_Cyber_Threats-Final_Project_Report

Ralph Langner, Megan Samford and Zach Tudor join Dale Peterson on the S4 Main Stage to close out S4x23. This Closing Panel is always an attendee favorite as none of these four are afraid to take a strong and even unconventional stance on at OT security topic or issue.

Dale Peterson interview CESER Director Puesh Kumar on the S4x23 Main Stage. We discuss a number of CESER programs how they are measuring success, what has not worked, why they are doing some things industry is already doing and more.

5:30 Where is the CESER CRISP program (detection and information sharing) today? Has it stopped or reduced the impact (outages and others) of cyber attacks on the electric sector? How will they measure the success of this program?

10:40 What has CESER tried, thought it would work, and ended up failing? 

14:05 CESER's CyTRICS program is testing vendor equipment? Why, does GE and Hitachi need help? And the results have been trivial vulnerabilities that could be found in hours. Why is CESER spending millions on this?

19:25 Cyber Informed Engineering (CIE) is it the same as Secure By Design? This is a long process, what will the early wins look like? Two years from now how will we know if we are succeeding? Maintaining a manual capability dominated the examples in the document, why hasn't this been highlighted in the program? How can we accelerate this?

25:20 Clean Energy Cyber Accelerator is looking at solutions (OT detection and MFA remote access to OT) that are well established with vendor offerings and asset owner deployments. Why is CECA doing this and trying to accomplish?

Chris Blask has a long career bringing new ideas to reality. He currently is Vice President of Strategy at Cybeats, who has a SBOM Studio product.

Cybeats is different in that SBOM Studio does not create SBOMs. This requires SBOMs to be available from somewhere, and Dale & Chris spend a lot of the podcast talking about the SBOM market today and in the future.

• What percentage of the OT software solutions have SBOMs today? What will that number be in three years, five years, seven years?
• When will the top 10% asset owners be able to be get value worth the effort from SBOMs and related tools and information?
• What will the SBOM marketplace look like?
• the DBOM.io project

Of course being Dale and Chris, they deviate into a lot of other topics. Such as Chris's quotes:

• “Security comes through transparency and automation”
• “2020, this is the last decade of cybersecurity” “the last decade when entirely new fields will be discovered” I think we have covered the field.

The August 2021 Unsolicited Response episode with Edgard Capdevielle, CEO of Nozomi Networks, was a fan favorite. So Dale invited Edgard back, like the first time it was a wide ranging and fun conversation. His budget analogy of OT security and a new child in the family was Dale's favorite part.

They cover a lot of ground including:

• the OT visibility and detection market growth in the last two years
• whether he stands by his 2021 view that a company that does "X, Y, Z and OT security" doesn't really do OT security
• how much of the back end (non-sensor) part of the market is moving to the cloud now and what will it be in three years. Plus some disagreements / discussion on architecture
• budget muscle and momentum
• what sort of metrics should an asset owner use to determine the value of these OT visibility and detection solutions
• how is the US Government affecting the market Enjoy!

Dale Peterson interviews cybersecurity legend Gene Spafford on the S4x23 Main Stage. Some of what they cover is:

• how to deal with securing legacy systems
• the incredibly productive 3 years of firsts including host IDS, network IDS, honeypot, network vulnerability scanner, and more. What led to this amazing production?
• The upcoming 25th year of CERIAS
• His new book Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions ... Avoiding the Hazards and Pitfalls that Derail Us and digging into some of those myths (Cyber Offense is Easier than Defense, Sharing More Threat Intel Will Make Things Better, Everyone Should Solve A Given Cybersecurity Problem In The Same Way)

Marty Edwards joins Dale Peterson to discuss the big stories of the first quarter of 2023.

• The US National Cybersecurity Strategy
• ISA / ISASecure starting an OT Site Assessment Certification
• Ransomware Affecting Operations (indirectly)

Marty and Dale then give their win and fail for Q1 and a prediction.

Dale Peterson talks with Matt Wyckhouse, Founder and CEO, of Finite State about where the SBOM products and market is today and where it will go in the future. This discussion was informed by the SBOM Challenge at S4x23.

• Who is the primary buyer of SBOM products and services today? (Hint: Matt thinks that 80% of the code in a product is third party)
• How accurate are the products, and the Finite State product in particular, in creating a SBOM?
• How much is the value of a SBOM degraded if it is not perfect? If it is missing software or has inaccuracies?
• Are the offerings now a product? A semi-custom service that uses a developed product? (with an apt comparison to the detection market)
• What will the US Government do with all these SBOMs if they actually get them? If they get an exponential increase in software inventory and the patching and cyber maintenance burden.
• Will there be a separate/distinct OT SBOM market? Will there be a SBOM market in the long run or will it get subsumed in some sort of asset management market?
• Early thoughts on the SBOM marketplace (a place to collect and distribute and respond to queries on SBOMs)
• Where is the industry / products now on VEX?
• Do configuration files belong in a SBOM?
• Surprise data points from the SBOM Challenge

Dale Peterson interviewed Puesh Kumar on the S4x23 Main Stage. Puesh is the Director of the US Dept of Energy's Cybersecurity, Energy Security, & Emergency Response (CESER). The lead US Government OT cybersecurity agency in the energy sector.

After Puesh gives a 3 minute overview on CESER, they dig into it.

• How are they measuring CRISP's detection and analysis progress? Has it stopped or limited the impact of any attacks?
• What is one of the CESER programs that didn't work and what did they learn from it?
• Why is the US Government testing products for GE, Hitachi and other large companies and questioning the results.
• The push for Cyber Informed Engineering and what success looks like
• Competing with industy
• and more ... CESER is tackling a lot so there was much to squeeze into 30 minutes

Steve Mustard took his 30 years of experience and wrote Industrial Cybersecurity: Case Studies and Best Practices, published by ISA. After talking about who the book is for and the writing process, Dale and Steve dig into the details. 

Given Steve's longtime involvement and leadership with ISA, it's not surprising the book leans heavily on ISA/IEC 62443. They talk chapters on architecture, certification, optimism / pessimism, risk management and a fundamental misunderstanding of IT by OT. Some agreement, some disagreement, and always a civil discourse.

Dale's interview with Michael Fischerkeller, co-author of the bood Cyber Persistence Theory. The first half of the interview digs into Cyber Persistence Theory.

• Why Michael believes cyber is a new and third strategic environment (in addition to conventional and nuclear)
• What is meant by cyber being an environment of exploitation and not coercion
• The theory's different use of initiative and why the theory believes it is the important element to winning ("initiative rather than restraint is necessitated")
• How a series of smaller, fait accompli, actions that are not responded to can have a strategic-level cumulative effect

The second half of the interview looks at what the world will look like and what asset owners should do if multiple nations believe in and act on this Cyber Persistence Theory. 

• Michael argues it already is in place and the US is late to the game
• Persistence presence in critical infrastructure would not "cross the threshold"
• How organizations will reach a cyber agreed competition
• Will this be escalatory (Michael says no)

Dale believes this is an incredibly important theory to understand because it is taking hold in the world's major powers.

Links

Cyber Persistence Theory book

Matt Morris and Mark Mattei of 1898 & Co. joined Dale to talk OT Managed Security Services as 1898 recently introduced an OT Managed Threat Protection and Response service. The discussion included:

• what they are monitoring in the OT environment
• the OT MSP competitive landscape (OT detection vendors, ICS vendors, large consulting vendors, ...)
• can you / should you monitor OT separate from IT
• how 1898 deals with competing partners (such as Claroty, Dragos and Nozomi) that they resell and install and competing against them for MSP
• the active response and threat hunting services and how that is accepted in the generally conservative
• and more

Bill Fehrman is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, co-chair of the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council, and chair of the E-ISAC.

The major topics Dale and Bill discuss include:

• The US Government / Electric Sector information sharing program around detection information and threat intel. Have they stopped or reduced the impact of attacks? What are the metrics they are using to determine if these resources are worth it?
• How is the industry and BHE positioned to recovery from a major outage due to a cyber attack? The mutual assistance agreements in the electric sector … the transformer and critical sparing programs. BHE has drills that take away technology and see if they can still deliver power. 
• Who will pay for all this cyber risk reduction? Will there be rate increases due to these efforts? Does customer demand for climate change actions or security actions drive investment? Be required for investment? What does he think of the FERC incentives to get utilities to invest in security?
• Is the single point person representing the electric sector, now Bill, by design and a good idea?

Tom VanNorman and Don Weber join Dale to describe the ICS Capture The Flag competition they will be running at S4x23, Feb 13 - 16 in Miami South Beach.

S4x23 web site

Donna Cusimano, Kim Legelis, and Saltanat Mashirov join Dale Peterson to talk about the Women In ICS Security Program at S4x23, Feb 13-16 in Miami South Beach. (see s4xevents.com/women).

These are three of a team of volunteers that have put together important career, education, and networking opportunities for the 100 free Women in ICS Security ticket holders and another ~150 women who will attend on a paid ticket. Really impressed and looking forward to seeing what this will accomplish.

Ralph Langner joins Dale on the Unsolicited Response Show to discuss Asset Management. They begin with the need for more exploration in OT, and more failures. After that they tackle:

- Why Ralph decided to shift his company and focus from consulting / speaking to product

- Is his OT Base, and asset management, a security product?

- What are the elements of asset management? Do they all belong in one product?

- OT, asset management and other, with ServiceNow and other enterprise solutions dealing with ticketing and human process management (this was Dale's favorite part of the show)

- Power BI integration, dashboards what are they good for?

- Other asset management integrations including OT detection solutions

As with any conversation with Ralph (and Dale) there are plenty of analysis and opinions that may be out of the mainstream. 

Enjoy

Links

- Langner's OT Base

- Ralph's TED Talk on Stuxnet 

- Ralph's S4x12 Stuxnet Deep Dive

- Robust Control System Networks

- To Kill A Centrifuge

- Art Manion, Dale and Ralph on Automating Patch Analysis

- Dale's ICS-Patch Decision Tree (What to patch when in ICS)