Practical Industrial Cybersecurity

Foreword

Imagine waking up in a house one day with no electricity. Or maybe your gas heater won't turn on, or you have no water flowing to your house. Simple everyday conveniences? No, these resources are critical dependencies that provide health, safety, nourishment, and general stability and security—not only in our homes and businesses but throughout society as a whole. These are exactly the outcomes of a coordinated cyberattack against critical infrastructure. Now imagine this type of cyber event on a national scale. We should all be concerned about this type of cyber event, not only regarding these basic necessities, but concerning stability if our financial or healthcare services are compromised. We are at an unbalanced period of cyberthreats versus our ability to identify and react to cyberattacks on this type of scale.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of working with the coauthor of this book, Mr. Phil Craig Jr. Together we provided our skills to support a critical electric infrastructure security program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The project explored and developed cybersecurity tools to quickly recover the US electrical grid from a persistent and aggressive cyberattack that would severely impact the stability of a large-scale power grid. We learned that the threats were real, and the challenge could be overwhelming.

Understanding, operating, and defending the digital environments that provide stable controls and communications ...