Page 14 - Cyber Defense eMagazine - February 2018

HOW WE CAN SECURE THE ENERGY GRID AND THE

SMART HOME OF THE FUTURE

by Uri Kreisman, COO, Bluechip Systems

On August 15th, 2012, the Saudi Arabian group Saudi Aramco suffered a malware

attack called “Shamoon” that damaged about thirty thousand computers. The state-

owned group runs the entire nation’s oil production, and the attack sent the nation’s
entire economy into disarray. In total, eighty-five percent of Saudi Aramco’s hardware

was compromised.

Shamoon highlights how a cyberattack on an energy entity could cripple an entire

nation. Indeed, it’s this potential for such damage that makes them an attractive option

for cyberterrorists.

Smart grids being an attractive target for cybercriminals points to a larger trend. The
internet of things (IoT), powered by smart devices, gives cybercriminals the opportunity

to hack devices previously unheard of even a decade ago. Since more and more homes
are now attached to the smart grid through IoT, the need to secure these networks is

becoming more and more vital.

All of the internet connected devices in your home that have cameras attached to them -
- smartphones, smart TVs, video game consoles, baby monitors, laptops -- can be

hacked and exploited to monitor and spy on residents and execute powerful botnet

attacks all without your knowledge.

There is now an increasing need to be able to secure IoT devices that were never built

to be secured in the first place. Instead of relying on manufacturer software updates, I
believe that a hardware-isolated solution is the future. If you embed a low-power, highly

flexible, hardware-isolated computational and storage container that isolates data inside

the host architecture, you can secure data and processes independently of the host’s
operating system or networking protocol and make them virtually impervious to attack;

an innovation that will change cybersecurity as we know it today.

14 Cyber Defense eMagazine – February 2018 Edition
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