INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As old-school industries like oil and gas increasingly network entities like oil platforms, they become more vulnerable to hacking attacks
that were impossible when they were stand-alone
That requires a new approach to security and Xage (pronounced Zage), a security startup that launched last year thinks it has the answer
They do this by storing configuration data from each device and controller on the network
inject malware into one of these controllers, the fingerprint identification would notice a change and shut it down until human technicians
a honey pot of these fingerprints were stored in a conventional database
For starters, it takes away that centralized honey pot
It also provides a means of authentication making it impossible to insert a fake fingerprint without explicit permission to do so.But he
says that Xage takes one more precaution unrelated to the blockchain to allow for legitimate updates to the controller
That will allow them to understand when there is a sanctioned update happening and not an external threat agent trying to mimic one.Checks
and balancesIn this way they check the validity of every fingerprint and have checks and balances every step of the way
this sounds like a complex way of protecting this infrastructure, Greatwood points out that these devices and controllers tend to be fairly
simple in terms of their configuration, not like the complexities involved in managing security on a network of workstations with many
possible access points for hackers.The irony here is that these companies are networking their devices to simplify maintenance, but in doing
so they have created a new set of issues
They want that network capability, but then the risk of hacking is greater because it only takes one hack to get access to thousands of
getting hacked, a Department of Homeland Security report released in March suggests that the energy sector has been an area of interest for
nation-state hackers in recent years.
