Episodes
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Bryson is joined by Sara Patrick, President and CEO at the Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO) to discuss cyber threats, mitigation strategies, and the United States energy infrastructure system. A lawyer by training, Sara led MRO’s enforcement group and compliance monitoring team for 16 years before stepping into her position as CEO.
What risks does AI pose to maintaining a reliable grid? How does MRO build resilience into the Northeast bulk power grid? What do smaller organizations need to be able to mitigate threats?
“When we think about operations, we're a lot of times focused on the bigger organizations. But from a cyber perspective, it really doesn't matter the size of your organization. You're all susceptible,” Sara explained.
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
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In this episode, Bryson sits down with MITRE EMB3D co-founder Niyo Little Thunder Pearson. For nearly 20 years, Niyo has been at the forefront of protecting critical infrastructure systems. He previously led incident response for American Express, directing the company’s Security Operations Center during the LulzSec and Anonymous attacks, and worked to develop an adversarial cyber defense program for the nation’s third largest gas utility at ONE Gas Oklahoma. Now, Niyo has co-founded MITRE EMB3D, a groundbreaking global threat network aimed at enhancing the security of embedded devices.
What is MITRE EMB3D? Who is the intended audience? What problems is it trying to solve?
“There is such a gap that exists today on what we understand and how risk averse these [embedded] devices are. They do well and they operate well. They're built for what they're doing in a safety context, but the security was never brought forward with it,” Niyo said.
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
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Missing episodes?
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In this episode, Bryson sits down with Mark Montgomery, Senior Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. For three years, Mark served as Executive Director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, created by congressional mandate to develop strategic approaches to defending against cyber attacks. Now, he directs CSC 2.0, an initiative that works to implement the recommendations of the Commission.
What were the key recommendations of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission? What are the politics of cybersecurity? How do we ensure that our international partners have the same level of resiliency and recovery that we have domestically?
“We'd like to fight our adversaries overseas. That means we have to fight with and through our allies and partners. So they have to have strong critical infrastructure as our forces arrive and execute their missions,” Mark said.
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
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Joe Marshall is a Senior IoT Security Strategist at Cisco Talos Intelligence Group. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Joe helped coordinate a multinational, multi-company coalition of volunteers and experts to find a technological solution.
Bryson and Joe sat down to discuss his efforts in Ukraine, how he got the go-ahead from Cisco leadership, and more.
“They were like, yeah, we can't even get accurate timing to work on our transmission grid because of jamming that is interrupting GPS communications,” Joe explains. “A week later I was sitting in my office and I went, ‘I wonder if we have something inside of Cisco that can actually help with this.’”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
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In this episode, Bryson Bort is joined by Paul Shaver, Global OT Security Practice Lead at Mandiant / Google Cloud to discuss the cyber threat landscape. How did Paul’s military background play a role in his decision to start working with control systems? What is the difference between an advanced persistent threat and a regular threat? What does Paul think is the best way to protect against documented threats from nation-state actors?
“I think if we're not doing a better job of protecting critical infrastructure, protecting our assets, any one of the nation state actors could cause that level of mass scale outage or destruction of capability. It comes down to being better prepared to protect these environments,” Paul said.
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
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Claroty is a cybersecurity company that helps organizations to secure cyber-physical systems across industrial (OT), healthcare (IoMT), and enterprise (IoT) environments: the Extended Internet of Things (XIoT).
In this episode, Bryson Bort sits down with Claroty director of research and industrial control system (ICS) vulnerability expert Sharon Brizinov to discuss everything ICS.
What are the most common vulnerabilities threatening ICS security? What’s the impact of cybersecurity controls standardization? And if he could wave a magic wand, what is one thing he’d change in the ICS industry?
“Don't expose ICS equipment over the Internet,” Sharon said. “That's my wish. To eliminate all the ICS Internet-exposed devices.”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
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Psymetis creates Operational Technology (OT) security solutions that quickly and prevent electric grid outages and catastrophic infrastructure failures. Psymetis’ Werewolf system provides condition monitoring and threat mitigation for the power grid, detecting cyberattacks, equipment failures, and physical damage in real-time.
In this episode of Hack the Plant, Bryson sits down with Psymetis CEO Robert Shaughnessy to discuss his work with Psymetis, challenges to innovation in the private sector, and the role of government in developing new technologies.
What ecosystem problem is Psymetis solving? How is the federal government involved? What threats do our critical infrastructure systems face? How is China involved?
“We're not talking about shooting wars, we're talking about wars where adversaries–to include economic adversaries–can have advantage,” Shaughnessy said. “As we're looking out over the next couple of years… there's a lot of frightening indicators that want us to plan for these events, knowing the capabilities of our tier one adversaries.”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
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As America’s Cyber Defense Agency and the National Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) leads the national effort to understand, manage, and reduce risk to the cyber and physical infrastructure that Americans rely on every day.
In this episode of Hack the Plant, Bryson sits down with CISA Director Jen Easterly to discuss her work on leading CISA’s critical infrastructure mission, implementing efforts to make products Secure by Design, and working with private companies to combat ransomware.
How has CISA’s role evolved since 2018? How do they advance critical infrastructure protection and cyber defense? What are Director Easterly’s priorities for 2024? And if she could wave a magic wand, what is one thing she would change?
“We need transparency so that we can all work together to protect the ecosystem, because the actors are not ever going to fight fair,” Easterly said. “We need all the collective strength of the community to keep Americans safe and secure.”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
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I’m joined by Jesse Whaley, the Chief Information Security Officer at Amtrak, for this episode of Hack the Plant. Amtrak is the nation's largest passenger rail service provider and one of the most complex and critical transportation systems in the world.
We discuss what it takes to oversee Amtrak’s digital assets and infrastructure, and what it takes to keep them secure.
“The company had a safety culture. Before every meeting before every job site that workers went out to on the railroad to do work. They did safety briefings … I got alignment on hey, this should be our standard company safety and security briefing, but with a whole pillar of safety as being cybersecurity. Since I did that, before every meeting, before every crew goes out to a job site, before every activity, there is a safety and security briefing, and it follows this essential template which highlights and reinforces cybersecurity.”
We also cover the impressive talent pipeline and team and workforce development programs Jesse put into place to staff Amtrak’s cybersecurity efforts. Join us to learn more.
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I’m joined by Dan Ricci, founder of the ICS Advisory Project, for this episode of Hack the Plant.
The ICS Advisory Project is a free, open-source platform that helps asset owners across 16 critical infrastructure sectors stay secure by identifying threats in their environments.
“I saw a gap in the community. There's good data that's coming at us…but no one did anything to take and make that data more digestible through visualization. So I decided, okay, well, I'm just going to do it now. I’m going to take the the data that I have been cleaning up and monitoring for like the past two years, and I'm going to put it together and visualize it, trying to build a tool that's more practical and usable by that asset owner, who may not have a cybersecurity background.”
We discuss how data visualization translates into more accessible information for the ICS operators on the ground who need the information - and how the data in the platform is maintained.
Join us for an interesting - if technical - discussion about how data from CISA and other agencies can be utilized by asset owners through ICS Advisory’s platform.
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I’m joined by Jason Healey, a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs, for this episode of Hack the Plant. Jason is a pioneer of cyber threat intelligence, with experience spanning fifteen years across the public and private sectors.
Today, we discuss a recent article Jason published at Lawfare, looking at 25 years of White House cyber policies, from the Clinton to the Biden administrations. We explore how regulatory policy has become more sophisticated over time, and the evolving nature of threats.
“One of the biggest debates right now amongst the international affairs community – is cyber really dangerous? You've got some people that look at how cyber capabilities have been used over the past two decades, how it's currently being used in Ukraine, and say, ‘it’s difficult to use this stuff, and frankly it’s not as dangerous as we think.' I tend to be on the more pessimistic side … if you're targeting things made of ones and zeros or things made of silicon, cyber can often not be that big a deal. But with smart grids, industrial control systems, and other things connected to the internet, it's not just things made of ones and zeros and silicon. Cyber attacks can take down things made of concrete and steel.”
To what extent is cyber necessary as part of a defense strategy? How has our regulatory approach changed over 25 years? Join us to learn more.
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I’m joined by David Patrick Emmerich, the Principal Cyber-Physical Range Architect at the University of Illinois, for this episode of Hack the Plant.
We’re here today to talk about RADICS, a DARPA project. RADICS stands for Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems. We discuss David’s role in building automated data collection and set up simulations and testing, and how the process of doing vulnerability discovery for physical assets helps asset owners.
“ ‘These are ways that an attacker could get around it.’ ‘These are where your blind spots might be’ … We help them understand that so that they can better improve the security of their systems. Or go back to their boards or their management and say ‘these are the tools we need’ or ‘this is the equipment we need and this is why we need it to better improve our security posture.’ Their systems are already critical, but as they become even more critical.”
We delve into challenges of securing operational technology (OT) for asset owners, different kinds of threats they face, and more technical projects that RADICS ignited.
Join us for an interesting - if technical - discussion to learn more about how physical systems interact with data to support real-time threat response.
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For today’s episode, I’m joined by Lesley Carhart. Lesley is the Director of Incident Response for North America at the industrial cybersecurity company Dragos, Inc. She leads incident response and proactively hunts for threats in customers’ ICS environments. Lesley was the incident response team lead at Motorola Solutions, and retired from the United States Air Force.
Today, we dive into the kinds of active threats out there that incident response deals with:
“We see insider cases, both intentional and unintentional insider cases. We see a lot of crime ware. So crime actors are getting smarter about where they're doing things like ransomware attacks. They're less haphazard. There's probably less overall attacks now, but they're more smartly performed. So they're targeting more critical industries. They are targeting people who they think will have to pay…And then there's still adversary groups who are more state style, who are building their capabilities to launch attacks in the future. And conducting espionage, preparing to do sabotage. And that's still happening and they're getting better at it.” - Lesley Carhart
We explore the challenges of securing operational technology (OT) for asset owners, different kinds of threats, and the process of doing vulnerability discovery for these physical assets.What do asset owners in critical infrastructure need to secure in the first place - and why is this so challenging to stay on top of? What kind of incident response plan is needed for OT in an industrial environment?
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For today’s episode, I’m joined by Zach Tudor, the Associate Laboratory Director at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). INL is a Department of Energy national laboratory, is the nation's leading center for nuclear energy research and development. Zach is responsible for INL’s Nuclear Nonproliferation, Critical Infrastructure Protection and Defense Systems missions.
We discuss how INL partners with the private sector to test challenges to critical infrastructure, and the cutting edge work INL is doing to secure the next generation of critical infrastructure.
"Honeywell has been one of the big players that has been working with us for quite a while. And Hitashi. Schneider Electric. They will provide us some of their systems that are critical in energy critical infrastructure, industrial control systems, and we will tear it down in a methodological process that we have developed here…[to] start building an understanding of where the risks are and the supply chain of our critical energy infrastructure." - Zach Tudor
Other topics we cover: What work is INL doing to secure the next generation of critical infrastructure? How can we make our critical infrastructure systems more resilient? How is data security managed with emerging technologies such as 5G, or self-driving cars? What strategies should the government and private industry use to categorize risk and mitigate it in a way that actually has measurable impact?
Join us to learn more.
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“One of my favorite topics is disaster resilience. We do quite a bit of work on what mutual assistance looks like and how to improve mutual assistance, how to rebuild systems once they've been hit by something terrible. My more recent interesting example was when a tornado had gone through a co-op and they were looking for what to do when their data server was just plain missing. It was Dorothy essentially over to somewhere else and they were asking us: Is it a data breach?”
- Emma Stewart
For today's episode, I'm joined by Emma Stewart, Ph.D., Chief Scientist at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). Electric coops are local, member-owned providers of affordable, reliable power. We discuss Dr. Stewart’s work supporting these co-ops in research, incident response, and managing the growing threat of ransomware attacks. What role do these electric co-ops play in our national energy supply? What core challenges do they have in staying resilient? Join us to learn more.
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“What's been most concerning is the rise of wiper malware. Threat actors are no longer interested in hey we're going to lock up all of your data. We're going to encrypt everything and force you to pay a ransom and then maybe give you the decryption key. Now with wiper malware they're just completely wiping it. … This year there's been a total of 5 wiper malwares that has been targeting critical infrastructure. So I think everyone should be very aware of that.” -Roya Gordon
For today's episode, I'm joined by Roya Gordon and Danielle Jablanski of Nozomi Networks, a firm that does inventory and situational awareness for operational technology industrial control systems. We discuss Nozomi’s research, the key kinds of threat intelligence globally, and the kinds of regulation that are needed in today’s landscape of emerging threats to critical infrastructure. What emerging kinds of cyber attacks are the most troublesome? Join us to learn more.
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“Agriculture and cybersecurity has just run under the radar. We're talking about something that's one fifth of the us economy right? This is this is a huge deal here in the US, and globally as well … We can begin get the right expertise and collateral assembled so we're not the next ransomware victim or we have enough resiliency built into our operations that if we get we get hit and we get smoked our recovery will be easier and our our financial losses will be minimized.” - Joe Marshall
In this episode of Hack the Plant, I’m joined by Joe Marshall, a security researcher for the Outreach Team at Cisco Talos, one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world. We discuss his work on cyber threats to agriculture, an industry which doesn’t have much information or training on cyber threat levels - and the likely cascading effects of the war in Ukraine for agricultural supply and food security worldwide.
Join us to learn more.
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“Most industrial economies only consume about 20% our total end use energy in the form of electricity. The rest, we consume by basically combusting fossil fuel … You could get all of your electricity from wind and solar and you've still only solved 20% of your carbon problem. A lot of the investments we've made at Energy Impact Partners are actually in electrification. Basically electrifying all that stuff that today is fueled directly by fossil fuel but in the future could be fueled by electricity.” - Andy Lubershane
In this episode of Hack the Plant, I’m joined by Andy Lubershane, Director of Research for Energy Impact Partners (EIP), a venture investment firm founded by a coalition of electricity and gas utilities. We discuss how energy companies themselves accelerate investments in clean energy such as electric, wind, and solar technologies - and the threats and challenges to this innovation from a cybersecurity perspective.
Join us to learn more.
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“You can only cover about 65% of the cybersecurity workforce demand with the existing workforce today. So we need to do something to address that gap. We need to either build that workforce or re-skill existing individuals that are looking to get into new fields. That's the approach that we're taking. So the need is there. We know that cyber risk is there. We know that adversaries are constantly re-skilling and skilling up as well. And we need to build a protective workforce around that.” - John Ellis
In this episode of Hack the Plant, we feature John Ellis, who heads up the Industrial Cyber Alliances at Siemens Energy. We discuss a new, industry-lead apprenticeship program he runs which focuses on critical infrastructure protection called CIISAp (short for: Cybersecurity & Industrial Infrastructure Security Apprenticeship Program).
ICS village is one of the partners of this program, which is tackling the gap between shortage of skilled employees and the workforce
How is the cohort designed? How can we encourage collaboration tech companies, service companies, academia, and government to train the cyber workforce of the future?
Join us to learn more.
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“How do we talk about all the great things we're doing in our communities, in optimizing and trying to reduce carbon, and looking at new solutions and coming up with different technologies that can help advance to help keep prices down and keep reliability up. We're really spoiled at times in the US with how often we have our power. I've had to travel on all seven continents and had times where I didn't have power because the grid was down in other countries.” Dr. Noel Schulz
In this episode of Hack the Plant, Dr. Noel Schulz of Washington State University joins us to talk about innovations within the power industry. We discuss how our power systems (which we often take for granted) work, how to keep them secure, and innovations around the world in power supply. We also tackle the challenges of creating more diversity in harnessing carbon-neutral power sources…and the analogous issues of diversity and inclusion in industry.
How can we increase access to reliable power while reducing our carbon footprint? Who
Join us as we discuss these questions, and more.
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