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UNDER LOCK

AND KEY

HOW OPEN SOURCE IS

SECURING THE UK’S
ENERGY SECTOR

Amid increasing risk of cyber-attacks, National Grid has been owners with a diverse range of
working with Lagoni to secure a eet of 25 compressors and operational technology (OT)
terminals. Technology journalist Kate O’Flaherty reports equipment spanning multiple versions.
While large capital assets are built
with design lives of 40 years or more,
yber-attacks are compromises on critical systems. OT so—ware and hardware becomes
increasingly hitting the This growing threat is leading to obsolete a—er 10 to 20 years or even
global energy sector. In regulatory pressure on critical national less. Pressure on investment budgets
2010, the Stuxnet virus infrastructure organisations to ensure means that provided systems are
C targeted an Iranian nuclear they are secure. From May 2018, Œnes working, it is o—en di›cult to justify
facility and in 2016, Industroyer of up to £17 million will be imposed replacement costs.
malware was used as part of an on those that fail to implement robust A potentially unintentional impact
assault on Ukraine’s national grid. measures under the EU’s Network and of the increasing switch to using
UK energy companies are not Information Systems (NIS) Directive. Windows as the operating system for
immune to this threat. Last year, the One of the greatest challenges is OT systems is that updates can drive
National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) the utility sector’s supervisory control a requirement to replace the entire
warned that assaults on the energy and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. control system infrastructure as
sector are “highly likely”. Meanwhile, By and large, these were never meant equipment and systems cannot
in April 2018, the UK and US made a to be connected to the internet support the most recent versions.
joint statement blaming Russia for (indeed many systems still in daily use
accessing routers in information- pre-date the internet). Adding to this, THE OPEN SOURCE SOLUTION
gathering attacks that could be laying procurement strategies and Amid this perfect storm of complexity,
the groundwork for devastating incremental upgrades have le— asset operational technology (OT) cyber
security is an urgent challenge. But
there is an alternative to costly,
Open source communities focus on complex solutions. Open source can
help address the problem without the
innovation and collaboration. This has need to replace expensive (and still
changed how the big vendors are thinking, perfectly serviceable) legacy control
systems and equipment.
with Google and Microsoft already now Providing the foundation for the
leading the open source revolution majority of commercially available
technologies for over a decade, open

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