Speaking at Navis World, Darich Runyan, senior director, information security at Virginia Port Authority, said the increasing public awareness of automation uptake in terminals leaves the sector vulnerable to hackers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are underprepared for what\u2019s out there in terms of cyber threats. As we see more press about terminals going online and being automated we are going to see more uptake of cyber attacks,\u201d he said. \u201cThe more we automate, the more dependent we are on data therefore the integrity of the data is paramount.\u201d<\/p>\n
The internet has lowered the entry barrier for hackers and since 2010 there has been a significant increase in attacks on automation. The majority of these attacks come from external sources.<\/p>\n
One weak point is external vendors that plug into operational systems, yet don\u2019t support encryption or even passwords. \u201cWhen an engineer comes in and plugs into a crane that can be a breach of your network,\u201d said Mr Runyan.<\/p>\n
If a terminal has been compromised it may not even know until months after the breach, he continued. \u201cWhen an attacker comes in there is a lot of planning and scoping. Then comes reconnaissance and scanning. The third step is exploitation. This all takes time \u2013 hackers can start a year or so before they actually attack and it can take months to detect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Runyan advises that ports implement a number of strategies, including adhering to the principal of least privilege \u2013 never let anyone know more than they need to do their job; whitelisting of applications; proper configuration management \u2013 knowing what\u2019s on every machine; and implementing identity management.<\/p>\n
He recommended that ports deploy the CIS diagnostic critical controls for corporate networks: \u201cJust implementing 50% of these will reduce over 90% of attacks.\u201d He also advised that ports undertake exercises to test resilience and implement a user awareness campaign. \u201cThe users are the weakest link”.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that cyber security must be initiated from the top down: \u201cSites that are successfully deploying have CISOs that report directly to the CEO.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With increasing automation of systems and equipment, expect a marked uptick in the number of cyber attacks on ports, a security specialist has warned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":10755,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-10754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terminal-operations"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10756,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10754\/revisions\/10756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10754"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=10754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}