Cybersecurity

Industrial control systems top threat to UK cyber security

“Industrial control systems (ICS) in Europe and particularly the UK are based on legacy systems, which is creating opportunities for attackers as we move to a process control network environment,” said Azeem Aleem, director of advanced cyber defence practice for Europe, Middle East and Africa (Emea) at RSA.

“We are seeing evidence of attacks on ICS in things like Stuxnet, Shamoon, and Black Energy linked to the attacks on the Ukrainian power grid,” he told Computer Weekly.

According to RSA researchers, there is a sophisticated surge in the attack domains across industrial control systems. At the same time, many organisations are not aware of the device connectivity patterns inside and outside their ICS environment.

“Shamoon 2, for example, triggers the Wiper component for wiping hard drives only at weekends when no-one is in the office, which shows the attackers are being more creative, said Aleem.