From the Keyboard to the Catastrophe: Targeting OT Infrastructure for National Disruption

Ransomware gangs, criminal threat actors and nation-state espionage operators have been observed targeting “Ports to Pipelines” – nearly every aspect of the National Critical Infrastructure (NCI) has suffered a cyber-attack of some kind. Join Ian Thornton-Trump CD, CISO for Cyjax as he brings some perspective and understanding to the challenges of Operation Technology (OT) cyber security. What are the impacts and consequences of exposing legacy OT to modern day threat actors? How has a safety culture of “fail safe” been implemented in the case of OT cyber and is the case for building cyber resiliency for OT networks competing with the extraordinary cost of maintenance of the existing OT infrastructure? The scope for such a discussion on NCI cyber-attacks is diverse and challenging - this talk will explore the answers to the key questions.

Key Questions:

• Given the existing level of disruption and failure of NCI networks in our daily lives, at what threshold would the public even notice an NCI cyber-attack?
• Do the consequences of a NCI attack present a political, regulator or operator problem - who is ultimately responsible for NCI cyber security and a possible clean-up?
• At what point do the consequences of an NCI cyber-attack demand a kinetic yet proportional response on threat actors by the government?