Kaspersky Lab announces specialised cybersecurity solution for industrial systems

• From the Kaspersky Lab, ICS CERT Report 2016, Malaysia has a risk score of 15%
• Solution delivers a unified, holistic approach to IT security for industrial facilities

KASPERSKY Lab announced a specialised solution to secure critical infrastructure and industrial facilities in Malaysia.

Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity delivers a unified, holistic approach to IT security for industrial facilities, combining the company’s leading technologies, services and intelligence in one unique package.

Malaysia is highly dependent on its industrial sector across manufacturing, infrastructure, power production, photovoltaics, automative construction and defence.

The industrial sector contributed 36.8% or over a third of the country’s GDP in 2014 and employed 36% of the labour force in 2012

For perspective, cyber-attacks on industrial control systems are on the increase with 67% of information & operational technology managers finding the security landscape to be critical, a 43% increase over 2015 findings.

From the Kaspersky Lab, Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS CERT) Report 2016, Malaysia has a risk score of 15%.

The scoring is determined by the observability mode, security assessment and exploit prevention. The country is also a target for cyber-attacks, ranking 66th on the Kaspersky Lab Industrial Cyberthreats Real-Time Map.

Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity or KICS changes the approach of traditional industrial security techniques and systems.  

Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity received the World Leading Internet Scientific and Technological Achievement Award at the 3rd World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China in 2016 for addressing the urgent need to comprehensively manage industrial cyber-risks and protect the continuity and integrity of systems that are vital to the economy, and people’s health and welfare.

"Today, the cybersecurity of industrial systems and critical infrastructures is of vital importance,” said Vikram Kalkat, Senior Key Account Manager, Kaspersky Industrial Cyber Security Global Business Development, APAC Region.

An increasing number of such systems are using devices and channels that interact with the outside world. Sometimes they use equipment that was never intended for external access, not to mention software that was created decades ago and has not been upgraded since! This is a very serious issue because not only is the continuity of the production process at stake, the environment and even human lives can be at risk.

“Our solution can ensure the cybersecurity of the technology cycle at all levels of the automated process control. We are also actively cooperating with manufacturers of automation systems to develop equipment that takes new cybersecurity standards and requirements into consideration."

Unlike traditional corporate IT networks, where confidentiality is the top priority, industrial control systems (ICS) demand continuity and consistency of the technological process. Strict regulation and compliance can lead to unprotected operating of critical facilities if the cybersecurity measures do not meet safety requirements.

Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity considers all these requirements and delivers protection to the ICS network at the layers most vulnerable to cyber-attacks – ICS/SCADA servers, HMI panels, engineering workstations, PLCs and more – securing them from cyber-threats without affecting operational continuity and consistency of the technological process.

ICS threat detection and prevention

Traditionally, ICS organsations are not well prepared or protected to withstand cyber security attacks. The design of ICS software and hardware is hard to call secure.

To minimise the possibility of a cyber-attack, Industrial Control Systems (ICS) is supposed to be run in a physically isolated environment. However, this is not always the case.

Based on Industrial Control Systems Threat Landscape report, Kaspersky Lab experts revealed 17,042 ICS components on 13,698 different hosts exposed to the Internet, likely belong to large organisations.

To minimise the possibility of a cyber-attack, ICS should be run in a physically isolated environment; however, the report shows that thousands of hosts are being exposed with 91.1% of these ICS hosts having vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely.

In addition, 3.3% of ICS hosts located in these organisations contain critical vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely.

Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity offers a combination of conventional security technologies, adapted for an ICS environment, such as anti-malware protection, whitelisting and vulnerability assessment functionality.

This foundation is further enhanced with technologies designed specifically for industrial environments, including integrity check for programmable logic controller (PLC), semantic monitoring of process control commands and telemetry data to detect cyber-attacks targeting the physical part of an infrastructure.

Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity also provides a special observability mode that focuses solely on the detection of cyber-attacks, operation personnel faults and anomalies inside an industrial network. All prevention and detection technologies are managed via a single centralised management console.

Specialised security services for critical infrastructure

The Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity solution enables a broad range of protection to help infrastructure operators build an efficient security strategy. This means going beyond threat detection and prevention technologies by adding specialised security services to develop incident response and prediction capabilities.

An efficient approach to security always starts with industrial cybersecurity training, both for IT security professionals and general employees (awareness programs), aiming to target the personnel awareness gap and mitigate the risks of human error.

Awareness training programmes include baseline security in ICS, social attack in critical infrastructure environment and others. Expert services include cybersecurity assessment and penetration testing.

These services allow customers to strengthen their own intelligence, manifest the most critical vulnerabilities, including zero-day threats, and predict cyber-threats relevant to the company’s specific industrial assets and technological processes.

Meeting the strict industry requirements

The highly customisable settings of Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity mean it can be configured in strict accordance with the requirements of different industries, facilities and production lines, allowing the solution to be effectively integrated into an organisation’s existing ICS network and technological processes without any significant modifications to the network or to the process. All the company’s technologies are tested by and certified with leading ICS vendors.

More detailed information about Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity is available here.

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