Electricity. Finance. Transportation. Our water supply. In Hack the Plant, podcast host Bryson Bort looks for answers to the question: Does connecting these systems, and others, to the internet leaves us more vulnerable to attacks by our enemies? We often take these critical infrastructure systems for granted, but they’re all becoming increasingly dependent on the internet to function. From the ransomware threats of Colonial Pipeline to the failure of the Texas power grid, it is clear our interconnectivity is also a significant source of risk. Hack the Plant walks through the world of hackers working on the front lines of cyber security and public safety to protect the systems you rely upon every day.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
ICS Village is a nonprofit that equips industry experts and policymakers with the tools to better defend our critical infrastructure. We educate people on critical infrastructure security with hands-on examples, not just nerd stuff. Catch us at an event near you! www.icsvillage.com.
The Institute for Security and Technology is a nonprofit think tank with the mission to bridge gaps between technology and policy leaders to help solve these emerging security problems together. Learn more at securityandtechnology.org.
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Old Systems, New Threats
Bryson Bort is joined by Jim Montgomery, Director, Industrial Cybersecurity Solutions at TXOne Networks. TXOne provides network-based and endpoint-based products to tackle security vulnerabilities across industrial environments. With decades of IT security experience, Jim now leads TXOne’s work protecting Operational Technology environments across critical sectors like automotive, oil and gas, pharma, manufacturing, and semiconductors.
How can we defend against threats that are already embedded within our systems? What are the most immediate and significant risks facing our critical infrastructure today? And how can operators begin to secure their networks?
“Let's start with the basics. Let's start with understanding. Let's start with making it hard to get into your environment, and let's start discouraging that type of behavior from attacking your environment,” Jim said.
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast represent those of the speaker, and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of their employers.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
The Truth About OT Vulnerabilities
Bryson Bort sits down with Adam Robbie, Head of OT Threat Research at Palo Alto Networks, to pull back the curtain on OT threat research. With a background in electrical engineering, Adam’s first job in cybersecurity was at an IT help desk. He now leads a team dedicated to identifying, analyzing, and mitigating cyber threats targeting Operational Technology (OT) environments.
What are the top threats Adam is seeing in OT attacks? Why is manufacturing such a vulnerable sector? And if he could wave a magic, non-Internet connected wand, what would he change?
“I really would love to have more experts in OT,” Adam said. “The more knowledge…and the more experts we have, it will fasten this process [of innovation].”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast represent those of the speaker, and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of their employers.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Bridging the Cybersecurity Resource Gap
Bryson Bort welcomes Sarah Powazek, Program Director of Public Interest Cybersecurity at the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, to discuss the organization’s work providing cybersecurity resources for the public, and CyberCAN, a project to connect cities and nonprofits providing critical services.
How can cities play a larger role in protecting their communities? What are the biggest cybersecurity challenges facing nonprofits? What innovative solutions are being developed to address the cybersecurity resource gap?
“It's never going to be enough to have one federal agency help every single organization in a country. We're just too large,” Sarah said. “I think the solution is to create more infrastructure at the state, local, and regional level.”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plan[e]t is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Preparing for Unnatural Disasters
Welcome to season 5! Our host Bryson Bort sits down with Institute for Security and Technology (IST) Executive in Residence for Public Safety & Security Josh Corman. Josh previously joined us on season 1, episode 2 to discuss his experience founding I Am The Cavalry, a grassroots organization focused on the intersection of digital security, public safety, and human life.
Today, Josh walks us through his Cyber Civil Defense initiative UnDisruptable27 and his work to bolster the resilience of local critical infrastructure systems.
What role can you play in making our communities more resilient? What risks do we face from a hybrid conflict? How can we better prepare for disruptions to critical infrastructure?
“You inform, influence, inspire. You make sure people aren't blindsided, and even if they can't stop the natural disaster, they can at least prepare for it and make informed decisions and innovate locally,” Josh said. “And unlike natural disasters, where we only have a couple hurricanes a year, we may have concurrent unnatural disasters on plural U.S. infrastructure sites across the country with finite resources to respond and recover.”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plan[e]t is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
From the Archives
For the final episode of the season, our host Bryson Bort reflects on four years and forty episodes of Hack the Plan[e]t, and picks a few favorites.
Episode 8, DoD and Critical Infrastructure: https://hack-the-plant.simplecast.com/episodes/dod-and-critical-infrastructure
Episode 10, The Congressman, The Commission and Our Critical Infrastructure: https://hack-the-plant.simplecast.com/episodes/the-congressman-the-commission-and-our-critical-infrastructure
Episode 27, Managing Incident Responses to Critical Infrastructure Attacks: https://hack-the-plant.simplecast.com/episodes/managing-incident-responses-to-critical-infrastructure-attacks
Episode 28, Cyber Threat Intelligence Over the Past 25 Years: https://hack-the-plant.simplecast.com/episodes/cyber-threat-intelligence-over-the-past-25-years
Episode 36, Supporting Ukrainian Electrical Grid Resilience in Wartime: https://hack-the-plant.simplecast.com/episodes/supporting-ukrainian-electrical-grid-resilience-in-wartime-mxxhn2g3
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Protecting Critical Infrastructure for Rural Electric Cooperatives
Bryson is joined by Carter Manucy, Director of Cybersecurity at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association to discuss rural electric cooperatives, the importance of collaboration, and the state of cybersecurity in the energy sector. With over two decades of experience in the sector, Carter was recently awarded E-ISAC’s prestigious Michael J. Assante Award for his leadership on initiatives to protect the grid and electric co-ops.
How are cooperatives fostering a stronger cybersecurity culture? What are the unique challenges faced by rural electric cooperatives in the cybersecurity landscape? And what does Carter see in his crystal ball for the future of cybersecurity in the energy sector?
“I think as a country, we’ve really got to pull together or else we're going to be behind the eight ball in a few years, and that could really look bad for everybody...power runs all of our lives,” Carter said. “If I had that magic wand, I think I would get rid of a lot of the politics that are there so that we can focus on getting funding to help in the areas that it really is needed, and move that needle forward.”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Reliability and Risks of the North American Power Grid
Bryson is joined by Sara Patrick, President and CEO at the Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO) to discuss cyber threats, mitigation strategies, and the United States energy infrastructure system. A lawyer by training, Sara led MRO’s enforcement group and compliance monitoring team for 16 years before stepping into her position as CEO.
What risks does AI pose to maintaining a reliable grid? How does MRO build resilience into the Northeast bulk power grid? What do smaller organizations need to be able to mitigate threats?
“When we think about operations, we're a lot of times focused on the bigger organizations. But from a cyber perspective, it really doesn't matter the size of your organization. You're all susceptible,” Sara explained.
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Securing Embedded Systems
In this episode, Bryson sits down with MITRE EMB3D co-founder Niyo Little Thunder Pearson. For nearly 20 years, Niyo has been at the forefront of protecting critical infrastructure systems. He previously led incident response for American Express, directing the company’s Security Operations Center during the LulzSec and Anonymous attacks, and worked to develop an adversarial cyber defense program for the nation’s third largest gas utility at ONE Gas Oklahoma. Now, Niyo has co-founded MITRE EMB3D, a groundbreaking global threat network aimed at enhancing the security of embedded devices.
What is MITRE EMB3D? Who is the intended audience? What problems is it trying to solve?
“There is such a gap that exists today on what we understand and how risk averse these [embedded] devices are. They do well and they operate well. They're built for what they're doing in a safety context, but the security was never brought forward with it,” Niyo said.
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
The Case For A Cyber Force
In this episode, Bryson sits down with Mark Montgomery, Senior Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. For three years, Mark served as Executive Director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, created by congressional mandate to develop strategic approaches to defending against cyber attacks. Now, he directs CSC 2.0, an initiative that works to implement the recommendations of the Commission.
What were the key recommendations of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission? What are the politics of cybersecurity? How do we ensure that our international partners have the same level of resiliency and recovery that we have domestically?
“We'd like to fight our adversaries overseas. That means we have to fight with and through our allies and partners. So they have to have strong critical infrastructure as our forces arrive and execute their missions,” Mark said.
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Supporting Ukrainian Electrical Grid Resilience in Wartime
Joe Marshall is a Senior IoT Security Strategist at Cisco Talos Intelligence Group. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Joe helped coordinate a multinational, multi-company coalition of volunteers and experts to find a technological solution.
Bryson and Joe sat down to discuss his efforts in Ukraine, how he got the go-ahead from Cisco leadership, and more.
“They were like, yeah, we can't even get accurate timing to work on our transmission grid because of jamming that is interrupting GPS communications,” Joe explains. “A week later I was sitting in my office and I went, ‘I wonder if we have something inside of Cisco that can actually help with this.’”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Preparing for the potential worst day
In this episode, Bryson Bort is joined by Paul Shaver, Global OT Security Practice Lead at Mandiant / Google Cloud to discuss the cyber threat landscape. How did Paul’s military background play a role in his decision to start working with control systems? What is the difference between an advanced persistent threat and a regular threat? What does Paul think is the best way to protect against documented threats from nation-state actors?
“I think if we're not doing a better job of protecting critical infrastructure, protecting our assets, any one of the nation state actors could cause that level of mass scale outage or destruction of capability. It comes down to being better prepared to protect these environments,” Paul said.
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
The ICS Hacker
Claroty is a cybersecurity company that helps organizations to secure cyber-physical systems across industrial (OT), healthcare (IoMT), and enterprise (IoT) environments: the Extended Internet of Things (XIoT).
In this episode, Bryson Bort sits down with Claroty director of research and industrial control system (ICS) vulnerability expert Sharon Brizinov to discuss everything ICS.
What are the most common vulnerabilities threatening ICS security? What’s the impact of cybersecurity controls standardization? And if he could wave a magic wand, what is one thing he’d change in the ICS industry?
“Don't expose ICS equipment over the Internet,” Sharon said. “That's my wish. To eliminate all the ICS Internet-exposed devices.”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Securing, Defending, and Bringing Resilience to Infrastructure
Psymetis creates Operational Technology (OT) security solutions that quickly and prevent electric grid outages and catastrophic infrastructure failures. Psymetis’ Werewolf system provides condition monitoring and threat mitigation for the power grid, detecting cyberattacks, equipment failures, and physical damage in real-time.
In this episode of Hack the Plant, Bryson sits down with Psymetis CEO Robert Shaughnessy to discuss his work with Psymetis, challenges to innovation in the private sector, and the role of government in developing new technologies.
What ecosystem problem is Psymetis solving? How is the federal government involved? What threats do our critical infrastructure systems face? How is China involved?
“We're not talking about shooting wars, we're talking about wars where adversaries–to include economic adversaries–can have advantage,” Shaughnessy said. “As we're looking out over the next couple of years… there's a lot of frightening indicators that want us to plan for these events, knowing the capabilities of our tier one adversaries.”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
CISA’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Mission with Jen Easterly
As America’s Cyber Defense Agency and the National Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) leads the national effort to understand, manage, and reduce risk to the cyber and physical infrastructure that Americans rely on every day.
In this episode of Hack the Plant, Bryson sits down with CISA Director Jen Easterly to discuss her work on leading CISA’s critical infrastructure mission, implementing efforts to make products Secure by Design, and working with private companies to combat ransomware.
How has CISA’s role evolved since 2018? How do they advance critical infrastructure protection and cyber defense? What are Director Easterly’s priorities for 2024? And if she could wave a magic wand, what is one thing she would change?
“We need transparency so that we can all work together to protect the ecosystem, because the actors are not ever going to fight fair,” Easterly said. “We need all the collective strength of the community to keep Americans safe and secure.”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Ensuring Cybersecurity for Amtrak
I’m joined by Jesse Whaley, the Chief Information Security Officer at Amtrak, for this episode of Hack the Plant. Amtrak is the nation's largest passenger rail service provider and one of the most complex and critical transportation systems in the world.
We discuss what it takes to oversee Amtrak’s digital assets and infrastructure, and what it takes to keep them secure.
“The company had a safety culture. Before every meeting before every job site that workers went out to on the railroad to do work. They did safety briefings … I got alignment on hey, this should be our standard company safety and security briefing, but with a whole pillar of safety as being cybersecurity. Since I did that, before every meeting, before every crew goes out to a job site, before every activity, there is a safety and security briefing, and it follows this essential template which highlights and reinforces cybersecurity.”
We also cover the impressive talent pipeline and team and workforce development programs Jesse put into place to staff Amtrak’s cybersecurity efforts. Join us to learn more.
Open Source Data Visualization for Cyber Threats
I’m joined by Dan Ricci, founder of the ICS Advisory Project, for this episode of Hack the Plant.
The ICS Advisory Project is a free, open-source platform that helps asset owners across 16 critical infrastructure sectors stay secure by identifying threats in their environments.
“I saw a gap in the community. There's good data that's coming at us…but no one did anything to take and make that data more digestible through visualization. So I decided, okay, well, I'm just going to do it now. I’m going to take the the data that I have been cleaning up and monitoring for like the past two years, and I'm going to put it together and visualize it, trying to build a tool that's more practical and usable by that asset owner, who may not have a cybersecurity background.”
We discuss how data visualization translates into more accessible information for the ICS operators on the ground who need the information - and how the data in the platform is maintained.
Join us for an interesting - if technical - discussion about how data from CISA and other agencies can be utilized by asset owners through ICS Advisory’s platform.
Cyber Threat Intelligence Over the Past 25 Years
I’m joined by Jason Healey, a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs, for this episode of Hack the Plant. Jason is a pioneer of cyber threat intelligence, with experience spanning fifteen years across the public and private sectors.
Today, we discuss a recent article Jason published at Lawfare, looking at 25 years of White House cyber policies, from the Clinton to the Biden administrations. We explore how regulatory policy has become more sophisticated over time, and the evolving nature of threats.
“One of the biggest debates right now amongst the international affairs community – is cyber really dangerous? You've got some people that look at how cyber capabilities have been used over the past two decades, how it's currently being used in Ukraine, and say, ‘it’s difficult to use this stuff, and frankly it’s not as dangerous as we think.' I tend to be on the more pessimistic side … if you're targeting things made of ones and zeros or things made of silicon, cyber can often not be that big a deal. But with smart grids, industrial control systems, and other things connected to the internet, it's not just things made of ones and zeros and silicon. Cyber attacks can take down things made of concrete and steel.”
To what extent is cyber necessary as part of a defense strategy? How has our regulatory approach changed over 25 years? Join us to learn more.
Architecting Threat Responses
I’m joined by David Patrick Emmerich, the Principal Cyber-Physical Range Architect at the University of Illinois, for this episode of Hack the Plant.
We’re here today to talk about RADICS, a DARPA project. RADICS stands for Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems. We discuss David’s role in building automated data collection and set up simulations and testing, and how the process of doing vulnerability discovery for physical assets helps asset owners.
“ ‘These are ways that an attacker could get around it.’ ‘These are where your blind spots might be’ … We help them understand that so that they can better improve the security of their systems. Or go back to their boards or their management and say ‘these are the tools we need’ or ‘this is the equipment we need and this is why we need it to better improve our security posture.’ Their systems are already critical, but as they become even more critical.”
We delve into challenges of securing operational technology (OT) for asset owners, different kinds of threats they face, and more technical projects that RADICS ignited.
Join us for an interesting - if technical - discussion to learn more about how physical systems interact with data to support real-time threat response.
Managing Incident Responses to Critical Infrastructure Attacks
For today’s episode, I’m joined by Lesley Carhart. Lesley is the Director of Incident Response for North America at the industrial cybersecurity company Dragos, Inc. She leads incident response and proactively hunts for threats in customers’ ICS environments. Lesley was the incident response team lead at Motorola Solutions, and retired from the United States Air Force.
Today, we dive into the kinds of active threats out there that incident response deals with:
“We see insider cases, both intentional and unintentional insider cases. We see a lot of crime ware. So crime actors are getting smarter about where they're doing things like ransomware attacks. They're less haphazard. There's probably less overall attacks now, but they're more smartly performed. So they're targeting more critical industries. They are targeting people who they think will have to pay…And then there's still adversary groups who are more state style, who are building their capabilities to launch attacks in the future. And conducting espionage, preparing to do sabotage. And that's still happening and they're getting better at it.” - Lesley Carhart
We explore the challenges of securing operational technology (OT) for asset owners, different kinds of threats, and the process of doing vulnerability discovery for these physical assets.
What do asset owners in critical infrastructure need to secure in the first place - and why is this so challenging to stay on top of? What kind of incident response plan is needed for OT in an industrial environment?
Join us to learn more.
Idaho National Labs and the Next Generation of Critical Infrastructure Security
For today’s episode, I’m joined by Zach Tudor, the Associate Laboratory Director at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). INL is a Department of Energy national laboratory, is the nation's leading center for nuclear energy research and development. Zach is responsible for INL’s Nuclear Nonproliferation, Critical Infrastructure Protection and Defense Systems missions.
We discuss how INL partners with the private sector to test challenges to critical infrastructure, and the cutting edge work INL is doing to secure the next generation of critical infrastructure.
"Honeywell has been one of the big players that has been working with us for quite a while. And Hitashi. Schneider Electric. They will provide us some of their systems that are critical in energy critical infrastructure, industrial control systems, and we will tear it down in a methodological process that we have developed here…[to] start building an understanding of where the risks are and the supply chain of our critical energy infrastructure." - Zach Tudor
Other topics we cover: What work is INL doing to secure the next generation of critical infrastructure? How can we make our critical infrastructure systems more resilient? How is data security managed with emerging technologies such as 5G, or self-driving cars? What strategies should the government and private industry use to categorize risk and mitigate it in a way that actually has measurable impact?
Join us to learn more.
Resilience and Safety for Electric Co-Ops
“One of my favorite topics is disaster resilience. We do quite a bit of work on what mutual assistance looks like and how to improve mutual assistance, how to rebuild systems once they've been hit by something terrible. My more recent interesting example was when a tornado had gone through a co-op and they were looking for what to do when their data server was just plain missing. It was Dorothy essentially over to somewhere else and they were asking us: Is it a data breach?”
- Emma Stewart
For today's episode, I'm joined by Emma Stewart, Ph.D., Chief Scientist at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). Electric coops are local, member-owned providers of affordable, reliable power. We discuss Dr. Stewart’s work supporting these co-ops in research, incident response, and managing the growing threat of ransomware attacks. What role do these electric co-ops play in our national energy supply? What core challenges do they have in staying resilient? Join us to learn more.
Threats to Industrial Control Systems
“What's been most concerning is the rise of wiper malware. Threat actors are no longer interested in hey we're going to lock up all of your data. We're going to encrypt everything and force you to pay a ransom and then maybe give you the decryption key. Now with wiper malware they're just completely wiping it. … This year there's been a total of 5 wiper malwares that has been targeting critical infrastructure. So I think everyone should be very aware of that.” -Roya Gordon
For today's episode, I'm joined by Roya Gordon and Danielle Jablanski of Nozomi Networks, a firm that does inventory and situational awareness for operational technology industrial control systems. We discuss Nozomi’s research, the key kinds of threat intelligence globally, and the kinds of regulation that are needed in today’s landscape of emerging threats to critical infrastructure. What emerging kinds of cyber attacks are the most troublesome? Join us to learn more.
Accelerating Innovation in Electric & Gas
“Most industrial economies only consume about 20% our total end use energy in the form of electricity. The rest, we consume by basically combusting fossil fuel … You could get all of your electricity from wind and solar and you've still only solved 20% of your carbon problem. A lot of the investments we've made at Energy Impact Partners are actually in electrification. Basically electrifying all that stuff that today is fueled directly by fossil fuel but in the future could be fueled by electricity.” - Andy Lubershane
In this episode of Hack the Plant, I’m joined by Andy Lubershane, Director of Research for Energy Impact Partners (EIP), a venture investment firm founded by a coalition of electricity and gas utilities. We discuss how energy companies themselves accelerate investments in clean energy such as electric, wind, and solar technologies - and the threats and challenges to this innovation from a cybersecurity perspective.
Join us to learn more.
Cyber threats to agriculture and food production
“Agriculture and cybersecurity has just run under the radar. We're talking about something that's one fifth of the us economy right? This is this is a huge deal here in the US, and globally as well … We can begin get the right expertise and collateral assembled so we're not the next ransomware victim or we have enough resiliency built into our operations that if we get we get hit and we get smoked our recovery will be easier and our our financial losses will be minimized.” - Joe Marshall
In this episode of Hack the Plant, I’m joined by Joe Marshall, a security researcher for the Outreach Team at Cisco Talos, one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world. We discuss his work on cyber threats to agriculture, an industry which doesn’t have much information or training on cyber threat levels - and the likely cascading effects of the war in Ukraine for agricultural supply and food security worldwide.
Join us to learn more.
Training the Cyber Workforce of the Future
“You can only cover about 65% of the cybersecurity workforce demand with the existing workforce today. So we need to do something to address that gap. We need to either build that workforce or re-skill existing individuals that are looking to get into new fields. That's the approach that we're taking. So the need is there. We know that cyber risk is there. We know that adversaries are constantly re-skilling and skilling up as well. And we need to build a protective workforce around that.” - John Ellis
In this episode of Hack the Plant, we feature John Ellis, who heads up the Industrial Cyber Alliances at Siemens Energy. We discuss a new, industry-lead apprenticeship program he runs which focuses on critical infrastructure protection called CIISAp (short for: Cybersecurity & Industrial Infrastructure Security Apprenticeship Program).
ICS village is one of the partners of this program, which is tackling the gap between shortage of skilled employees and the workforce
How is the cohort designed? How can we encourage collaboration tech companies, service companies, academia, and government to train the cyber workforce of the future?
Join us to learn more.
Diversity in Power Systems Distribution
“How do we talk about all the great things we're doing in our communities, in optimizing and trying to reduce carbon, and looking at new solutions and coming up with different technologies that can help advance to help keep prices down and keep reliability up. We're really spoiled at times in the US with how often we have our power. I've had to travel on all seven continents and had times where I didn't have power because the grid was down in other countries.” Dr. Noel Schulz
In this episode of Hack the Plant, Dr. Noel Schulz of Washington State University joins us to talk about innovations within the power industry. We discuss how our power systems (which we often take for granted) work, how to keep them secure, and innovations around the world in power supply. We also tackle the challenges of creating more diversity in harnessing carbon-neutral power sources…and the analogous issues of diversity and inclusion in industry.
How can we increase access to reliable power while reducing our carbon footprint? Who
Join us as we discuss these questions, and more.
The future of cybersecurity education?
“I've been educating now for about eight years within the college system and that hands-on experiential learning is critical. When I have students do something that's like a scenario based off of different security assessments I've done or just weaving in some real world stuff, they thrive. They really get excited. They walk away from it energized.” - Dennis Skarr
In this episode of Hack the Plant, Dennis Skarr of Everett Community College joins us to talk about an industrial cybersecurity program for students he has recently built. He describes the interactive element that helps students get excited about cybersecurity - in turn inspiring the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
What success has this program had - and how, and why, should it be replicated across the country?
Join us as we discuss these questions, and more.
INL - Wind energy and cybersecurity challenges
Wind energy is one of the most rapidly growing energy generation sources in the US - how can these renewable systems stay resilient in the face of cyber attacks as the industry grows?
In this episode, we hear from Megan Culler and Keith Mecham of Idaho National Labs (or INL). Megan Culler is a Power Engineer and Researcher; Keith Mecham is a Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Engineer.
INL is a Federally funded research and development center (FFRDC): public-private partnerships which conduct research and development for the United States Government. They operate large infrastructure security programs that include wind, power, and telecommunication, as well as provide engineering and development support to the federal government.
How does wind fit into our broader energy infrastructure? What threats does cybersecurity present to renewable energy? How can industry work tougher for policymakers to keep our systems secure?
Join us as we discuss these questions, and more.
“A big risk is people just don't understand the risks with these types of systems. I think that's starting to change, as we have larger and larger energy companies that already understand cybersecurity jumping into wind. We have projects from Royal Dutch Shell and BP and other energy companies. They're setting up huge wind farms, especially offshore. They understand cybersecurity because of their refineries and pipeline systems, better than a startup does. And we hope we see more of that bring some maturity to the industry.”
-Keith Mecham
Cyber Challenges to Securing Our Electric System - California and Beyond
“Initially it was looking at specific types of attacks and thinking how those could be utilized against our systems, but then it became more sophisticated in thinking of how these attacks could be coordinated together by larger actors? …. I think that regulation's role is more to draw attention and provide you with a base minimum, and then from there, it's the responsibility of those industries of those actors to step up and design the systems and implement true security.” - David Coher
How can our electrical grid system anticipate cybersecurity attacks? What is the nature of its vulnerability to attack, and what role can regulation play in securing our future?
In this episode, we hear from David Coher, leader of Southern California Edison’s (SCE) Energy Contract Management team, which manages their long-term energy procurement contracts (approximately $4 billion, annually). David is an attorney, who moved from real estate litigation to SCE where he established programs for cybersecurity, participation in California’s Greenhouse Gas emissions Cap & Trade market, and Dodd-Frank compliance.
We discussed how the power grid works and the changing landscape of keeping our energy grids safe from cyber attacks. We also explored the challenges of establishing a regulatory compliance program - in particular how to anticipate cybersecurity threats.
What is next for SCE? What are some potential opportunities and threats on the horizon for the safety of our electric grid? Join us to learn more.
Innovation in Critical Infrastructure
“We had to go out and talk to experts and just have the conversations and then be brutally honest about what those people were telling us about the problem. In many cases, we didn't even tell them what we were thinking about doing. We would call them up and say, "How are you securing your industrial control systems today?" and just listen.” - Joshua Steinman
“We really learned to go in, us. Instead of imposing what we thought the problem would be for other asset owners, really let them tell us what their problems were. So that was probably one of the biggest takeaways during the customer discovery. And it was also great to hear that a lot of people had, I would say, some similar problems across different industry verticals. And everyone knew that there needed to be some change and wanted to see change. So that was also very refreshing for me.” -Brandon Park
What are the biggest challenges in critical infrastructure cybersecurity? In this episode of Hack the Plant, we hear from two entrepreneurs, Joshua Steinman & Brandon Park, who just did a 7 month long customer discovery process trying to understand where the key problems are now to keep our ICS systems safe from cyber threats.
Joshua Steinman is a former naval officer, ICS cybersecurity startup founder, and cybersecurity policy senior director during the Trump administration.
Brandon Park formerly worked at Amazon as a Security Engineer focused on securing ICS at scale. Prior to Amazon, he supported Department of Defense and Department of Energy projects.
Their conversations spanned from ICS cybersecurity experts to operators to executives at companies with large footprints in the space - and led to some surprising and unexpected insights that have led to the launch of something called Galvanick.
How can this make our ICS more safe, reliable, or cyber-resilient? Join us to learn more.
AI and Critical Infrastructure
When will hard infrastructure have machine learning capabilities? It might be sooner than you think. Ariel Stern, formerly an engineer in the Israeli Ministry of Defense and a civil infrastructure project manager, currently CEO of Ayyeka, which offers remote monitoring for industrial Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Ariel has a forward-looking approach to creating resilience in critical infrastructure…anticipating that we are entering a new era for critical infrastructure….from IoT data creation, management, and analysis to advanced Artificial Intelligence pattern recognition and prediction.
Is this science fiction? Join us to learn how the technology that can create resilient infrastructure for tomorrow is here - today.
Biden Admin's Cybersecurity Executive Order
On May 12, 2021, the Biden Administration issued an Executive Order “On Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.” This came in the wake of ransomware attacks drawing national attention: Solar Winds, Colonial Pipeline, and more.
We take a deep dive into the Executive Order, and what it means for public and private efforts to keep our critical infrastructure safe with two attorneys and cybersecurity experts.
Megan Brown is a Partner at Wiley Rein. She has deep expertise in cybersecurity and data privacy issues, working for national and global companies on cutting edge compliance and risk management.
Liz Wharton the Chief of Staff at SCYTHE where she serves as a strategic advisor for the CEO and leadership team, building and maintaining cross-department relationships, crafting external initiatives, and driving day-to-day projects and tasks. Previously she was the Senior Assistant City Attorney with the City of Atlanta, where she served on the immediate incident response team for the City of Atlanta’s ransomware incident.
ERCOT and the Texas Power Outage
In February, severe winter storms and an electricity generation failure left almost 5 million people in Texas without power, leading to hundreds of deaths, and a shortage of heat, food and water. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers. How did the massive power failure happen? What does this power outage suggest about the resilience of our critical infrastructure?
Beth Garza, former director of ERCOT and senior fellow at the R Street Institute, answers these questions and more. Over the course of her 35-year career in the electric utility industry, Beth Garza has held a variety of leadership roles in generation and transmission planning, system operations, regulatory affairs and market design for both regulated and competitive entities.
Further information:
- Watch: Shedding light on the legislative response to the Texas blackouts.
- Testimony: The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology hearing on "Lessons learned from the Texas blackouts: Research needs for a secure and resilient grid."
Department of Defense Policy and ICS Security
Daryl Haegley is the Director of Cyberspace Mission Assurance and Deterrence at the Department of Defense. Daryl oversees cybersecurity efforts to secure control systems (ICS) and operational technology (OT), and focuses on bringing awareness to the ever-increasing cyber threats. He has 30 years of military, civilian and commercial consulting experience. He has successfully advocated to change laws, DoD policy and standards, and academic curricula while initiating the first comprehensive facilities related control systems cybersecurity program of its kind within the federal government.
"We're going to see despite investments, despite technology, we're going to see some ransomware on some of these critical infrastructure systems. And I think people are going to get hurt. Things are going to stop operating. Things are going to explode and there's going to be some serious consequences."
The Congressman, The Commission, and Our Critical Infrastructure
Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) has been instrumental in setting up the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a bipartisan, intragovernmental body whose goal is to help create a strategic approach to defending the United States from cyber attacks of significant consequence (and for listeners of this podcast, that definitely means attacks on our critical infrastructure). Congressman Gallagher's background in the Marines, and work in the public and private sectors, gives him a unique position to help create law around the intersection of national security and cybersecurity as the two become "kitchen table issues", as he tells his constituents.
On the Front Lines with Rob Lee
Rob Lee, the CEO and founder of the industrial cybersecurity company, Dragos, is a pioneer in the ICS threat intelligence and incident response community. Before Dragos, Rob served as a cyber operations officer in the U.S. Air Force tasked to the National Security Agency, helping protect industrial infrastructure - an issue that leaders around the world are now wrestling with. As he likes to put it, "The threat is worse than you realize but not as bad as you want to imagine."
DoD and Critical Infrastructure
The Army Cyber Institute has been testing the cybersecurity preparedness of cities around the country in an experiment called Jack Voltaic. It is a major, multi-sector public private exercise aimed at understanding critical infrastructure dependencies on force deployment. We're joined by Lt. Col. Douglas Fletcher - chief data scientist - and Lt. Col Erica Mitchell - key resources research lead for critical infrastructure - to talk about their findings.
Critical Infrastructure Protection & ICS
For today's episode, I'm joined by Dale Peterson, who is on the leading edge of helping security conscious asset owners in a range of sectors effectively manage and reduce cyber risk to their Industrial Control Systems (known as an “ICS”). ICS is a computer system that monitors or controls a physical process. They exist everywhere: power generation, water supply systems, transmission, product manufacturing. We talk today about some of the key cyber vulnerabilities in these systems, and the relationship between the government and the private sector, how CEOs and other decision makers should evaluate and deploy resources to deal with ICS cyber threats, and the importance of regulators developing metrics for improving cyber security relative to ICS systems.
Critical Response for Critical Infrastructure
Megan Samford is the first woman Chief Product Security Officer in industrial control systems (ICS) manufacturing. She's spent time in both the private and public sectors, from Rockwell Automation and General Electric to serving two governors of Virginia and their offices of homeland security. She is also spearheading a project to develop a common language and framework for cyber security between governments, private sector and first responders in the space. Or, as she puts it: "I believe that every other type of responder in the world, whether you're a firefighter or a police officer, or a medic...there is a framework by which you could literally be picked up an airlifted and dropped into another organization or locality or state or government really, and you would seemingly know how to fall in line with the common framework to respond alongside your peers. But within cyber, it's very schizophrenic, it's very disparate, and it's largely based on the needs of individual companies."
BEER and Cyber
Patrick Miller sits at the intersection of cybersecurity and regulation because, as he likes to say, "those two don't fit well." Beyond his decades of work in the space, he also co-founded BEER-ISAC, a network of individuals who comprise the human component of critical infrastructure security. They share war stories, information, intelligence and - as the name says - drinks. In this episode, Patrick explains the difference between compliance and security in the evolving space defending critical infrastructure.
Oil, Gas and Cybersecurity in the Middle East
"Securing and having the right measures of cybersecurity relates to the national security of the whole country and our national income." Reem Al-Shammari is the chief information security officer for the Kuwait Oil Company. She sits at the intersection of a massive swath of her country's economy - oil and gas - and the need to secure it against emerging threats faster than government regulations can be established. Because Al-Shammari works within a global industry, she also has to help ensure cross-border information sharing frameworks and practices for the six Gulf countries to stay one step ahead of bad actors.
The Nightmare: A Story by AI
The second half of our interview with author and strategist P.W. Singer. He discusses his latest book - Burn In - where he translates real-world research about Artificial Intelligence into a glimpse at a future we’re not too far away from if things go wrong and we do not protect ourselves.
"In our lifetime for the next year 10 or 20 years, artificial intelligence is not about a rebellion of the robots (a-la the Terminator). It's industrial revolution. It's a rewiring of business, military, the economy, our society with AI and automation in all its various forms...In these scenarios, AI is not just about prediction, it's also about influence."
Where is the Cavalry?
Hackers may be our best, last hope as our dependence on connected technology is increasing faster than our ability to safeguard ourselves. This episode you will learn about I Am the Cavalry - a volunteer organization of cybersecurity experts devoted to improving the security of medical devices, transportation, connected homes, and infrastructure - and its co-founder, Joshua Corman, who serves as an ambassador between the security community and federal officials protecting us on the front lines.
The Future of War with P.W. Singer
“Our dependence on connected technology is growing faster than our ability to secure it, especially in areas affecting public safety and human life.” Author and strategist P.W. Singer examines the future of war, and explains the difficulty in securing critical infrastructure against cyber attacks and technologies that are cheaper and easier for foreign and non-state actors to acquire. He also discusses how he uses the "technothriller" novel type to communicate his nonfiction research to more audiences.
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Learn more about the R Street Institute at www.rstreet.org and follow them on Twitter @RSI.
Learn more about ICS Village at www.icsvillage.com and follow them on Twitter @ICS_Village.
Learn more about P.W. Singer at www.pwsinger.com and follow him on Twitter @peterwsinger. He is strategist and senior fellow at New America and the author of several books including Ghost Fleet, Burn-in, LikeWar, Wired for War, Corporate Warriors, and others.
Trailer - Hack the Plant
Learn more about ICS village at http://www.icsvillage.com.
Learn more about the R Street Institute at http://www.rstreet.org.
Follow Bryson Bort on Twitter @BrysonBort.
Follow the R Street Institute on Twitter @RSI.
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