In the wee hours early one morning not too long ago a firewall ceased operating at a major oil company refinery, and while there were no dramatic explosions or oil spills, the end result was five hours of lost production and a cyber incident that caused unplanned downtime.
The shutdown was not the result of a malicious attack, but rather a simple miscommunication between IT and the process engineering folks.
For a major oil company $1 million may appear to be peanuts, but that was just one refinery, on one day, during one month of the year. That one small accidental cyber incident can occur anytime and the costs do add up.
Stuxnet has captured the interest of those in and around the manufacturing automation industry these days and deservedly so, it was a targeted attack at an industrial control system. What doesn’t get reported on and what occurs more frequently are the small cyber incidents that occur daily that didn’t have to happen. At some point there is usually a breakdown in some form of communication and the manufacturer ends up paying the price in lost production and revenue.
By: Gregory Hale
From: ISS Source