It is crucial to recognize the importance of the Industrial Control Systems (ISC) in our daily life whether it is related to power, transport, water, gas, and other critical infrastructures. Each of these infrastructures is needed at all time and any downtime could be disastrous for the persons and businesses. The following safeguards will help the Western Interconnection power grid as well as any other entity that uses ICS from running a safe system while keeping attackers away on under control.
• Developing a strict policy and procedure that aligns with a set of configuration baseline for all hardware and software. Knowing that ICS, like any other system in the world is subject to vulnerabilities, the policy and procedure will prevent employees from causing fatal errors that will compromise the network. Such policy will warn the employees from opening an email attachment originating from an unknown source.
• Increase physical security knowing that it reduces the number of accidental or deliberate loss or damage to organizational assets and surrounding environment. The Western Interconnection power grid …show more content…
Nevertheless, keeping the ICS network separated from the corporate network or any other public network using firewall, routers and VPN appliances will allow this separation to take place as longer as strict policy and procedure is followed, knowing that today’s attackers target insiders within a network and employ them as point of compromise; qualified personnel is trained, device are configured following the state-of-the-art standards, and firmware and software are