The cyber threats facing electric power and gas companies include the typical threats that plague other industries: data theft, billing fraud, and ransomware. Indeed, as the global energy and utilities market becomes more connected to next-generation digital technologies and networks – to the benefit of consumers seeking ‘smart’ solutions – exposure to cyber-attacks and security breaches increases.
The sector also presents unique challenges that need to be addressed in any cybersecurity initiatives. The ‘real-time’ requirements of energy systems, for example, which mean they must act extremely quickly, makes authentication and verification complex. Another challenge is grids and pipelines are often interconnected beyond one territory, meaning a compromise to security could have far-reaching implications. The combination of legacy and new systems also creates higher risk to critical infrastructure.
Nipper helps advanced cyber teams make credible, risk-based decisions to improve network security and protect critical networks against increasingly sophisticated exploits. Nipper’s accurate configuration assessments enables users to detect misconfigurations in routers, switches and firewalls, as well as determining their impact to the network if exploited, the ease of exploitation, and ease of fix - in order to prioritize remediation workflows by risk criticality. Nipper Enterprise is now providing this capability at scale, enabling the assessment of up to 300,000 devices on an up-to-hourly basis, and the roadmap to automatically remediate vulnerabilities and insecure configurations in order to help organizations establish a defendable network.
