Colonial Pipeline Security Incident

The Colonial Pipeline Attack: Lesson Learned? Cybersecurity May 14, 2021 By Rebecca Spoont Ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure have become more prevalent than ever before. So much so that the Biden administration has declared them a national security threat . The sophistication and frequency of these security breaches have grown significantly, causing vulnerability disclosures to increase at a staggering rate: 25% year-over-year. Critical manufacturing, energy, and water make up for many of those disclosures. As these industries become more dependent on digital technologies, this trend will onlyworsen unlessorganizationsheed the warningechoed by the Colonial Pipelinebreach. To help people better understand what to take away from the Colonial Pipelineattack ,wevecompiled a series of questions that manyorganizationshave askedin the weeks following theinitialbreach. What happened , and who is behind the attack? According to reports, it appears that there was a ransomware attack on the corporate IT network that caused operators to temporarily halt production on the Operational Technology (OT) network. Due to the increased number of dependencies between business and operations networks, it has become challenging to isolate systems, even though it is considered best practices. Colonial decided the safest approach was to suspend operations and investigate the extent of the data breach to avoid encryption of critical control systems. The attack has been attributed toa Russian cybercriminal group called Darkside . They are a relative newcomeramongransomware gangsandemploya RobinHood - stylestrategy of stealing from the rich to give to the poor.On their website , they claim they willnot target hospitals, hospices, schools, universities, non-profit organizations, or the government sector. In fact, Darksidesoughtto play downanyintentionthat they wereattemptingto take down criticalinfrastructure . We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics, do...

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