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Systematizing IT Risks
(2019)
IT risks — risks associated with the operation or use of information technology — have taken on great importance in business, and IT risk management is accordingly important in the science and practice of information management. Therefore, it is necessary to systematize IT risks in order to plan, manage and control for different risk-specific measures. In order to choose and implement suitable measures for managing IT risks, effect-based and causebased procedures are necessary. These procedures are explained in detail for IT security risks because of their special importance.
Dramatic increases in the number of cyber security attacks and breaches toward businesses and organizations have been experienced in recent years. The negative impacts of these breaches not only cause the stealing and compromising of sensitive information, malfunctioning of network devices, disruption of everyday operations, financial damage to the attacked business or organization itself, but also may navigate to peer businesses/organizations in the same industry. Therefore, prevention and early detection of these attacks play a significant role in the continuity of operations in IT-dependent organizations. At the same time detection of various types of attacks has become extremely difficult as attacks get more sophisticated, distributed and enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Detection and handling of these attacks require sophisticated intrusion detection systems which run on powerful hardware and are administered by highly experienced security staff. Yet, these resources are costly to employ, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). To address these issues, we developed an architecture -within the GLACIER project- that can be realized as an in-house operated Security Information Event Management (SIEM) system for SMEs. It is affordable for SMEs as it is solely based on free and open-source components and thus does not require any licensing fees. Moreover, it is a Self-Contained System (SCS) and does not require too much management effort. It requires short configuration and learning phases after which it can be self-contained as long as the monitored infrastructure is stable (apart from a reaction to the generated alerts which may be outsourced to a service provider in SMEs, if necessary). Another main benefit of this system is to supply data to advanced detection algorithms, such as multidimensional analysis algorithms, in addition to traditional SIEMspecific tasks like data collection, normalization, enrichment, and storage. It supports the application of novel methods to detect security-related anomalies. The most distinct feature of this system that differentiates it from similar solutions in the market is its user feedback capability. Detected anomalies are displayed in a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to the security staff who are allowed to give feedback for anomalies. Subsequently, this feedback is utilized to fine-tune the anomaly detection algorithm. In addition, this GUI also provides access to network actors for quick incident responses. The system in general is suitable for both Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) environments, while the detection algorithm must be specifically trained for each of these environments individually.
Network convergence is an increasing trend in the automation domain. More and more plant owners strive for a unification of networks in their plants. This yields a seamless network structure, simplified supervision, and reduced training effort for the personnel, as only one unified network technology needs to be handled. Ethernet-APL is one piece of the puzzle for such a converged network, supporting various real time protocols like PROFINET, EtherNet, HART-IP as well as the middleware protocol OPC UA. This paper gives an overview on the impact of Ethernet-APL field devices to OT security and proposes how to ensure OT security for them.
The PROFINET protocol has been extended in the current version to include security functions. This allows flexible network architectures with the consideration of OT security requirements to be designed for PROFINET, which were not possible due to the network segmentation previously required. In addition to the manufacturers of the protocol stacks, component manufacturers are also required to provide a secure implementation in their devices. The necessary measures go beyond the use of a secure protocol stack. Using the example of an Ethernet-APL transmitter with PROFINET communication, this article shows which technical and organizational conditions will have to be considered by PROFINET device manufacturers in the future.