Cybersecurity has been a hot topic in both the popular and trade news. In fact, FE has had at least seven major stories this year (see the Resources Section at the end of the article). We’ve already seen the damage that can result from cybersecurity attacks—loss of millions of dollars and the potential risk to equipment, personnel, infrastructure and community. Guarding against these attacks demands all the attention and experts you can muster to create a plan to minimize risks.
While cybersecurity incidents can seem somewhat unpredictable, nevertheless, the ultimate responsibility in preventing damaging attacks is still incumbent on the user’s/manufacturer’s senior management taking precautions—after all managing cybersecurity is as important as maintaining a profit. Therefore, processors’ senior management should be educating end users about email scams and hacks and working closely with the IT staff and the OT (operations technology) group to plan systems and make them hardened to attack vectors. Management also should be preparing a recovery plan and—perhaps most important—having an offline backup system that works and has been tested thoroughly.