US-CERT recently released a report detailing how a water treatment plant in Florida experienced a cyber security breach in which the attackers were able to change the dosing of chemicals being used in the water treatment process. Luckily the operators at the plant noticed the change and were able to fix the problem before any water was affected. While your business may not have any SCADA systems or be using chemicals, the way the attackers got in was through poor cyber hygiene practices that we have been discussing with our customers for years.
- Insecure remote access – The water treatment plant was using TeamViewer, a common remote access tool that is very easy to use but also has inherent security flaws that can be leveraged by attackers
- Running unsupported systems – The water treatment plant was still running the Windows 7 Operating System, which has been out of support by Microsoft for over a year. It is critical to only run software and OS versions that receive support and security updates from their vendors.
More details from the US-CERT report can be found here – https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa21-042a
If you feel you are vulnerable in either of these areas, please reach out to CMA today so we can discuss how to make your business more secure.