Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

ICS/OT

NSA Issues Guidance on Securing IT-OT Connectivity

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) last week released a cybersecurity advisory focusing on the security of operational technology (OT) systems, particularly in terms of connectivity to IT systems.

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) last week released a cybersecurity advisory focusing on the security of operational technology (OT) systems, particularly in terms of connectivity to IT systems.

The NSA’s advisory, titled “Stop Malicious Cyber Activity Against Connected Operational Technology,” is specifically addressed to the Department of Defense, national security system (NSS) and defense industrial base organizations, but the recommendations can be useful to any industrial company.

The advisory shares recommendations for evaluating risks and improving the securing of connections between IT systems — these can often serve as an entry point into industrial networks — and OT systems.

“Each IT-OT connection increases the potential attack surface,” the NSA said. “To prevent dangerous results from OT exploitation, OT operators and IT system administrators should ensure only the most imperative IT-OT connections are allowed, and that these are hardened to the greatest extent possible.”

As an example, the agency provided the recent SolarWinds incident, which impacted hundreds of industrial organizations, including in critical infrastructure sectors.

The guidance provided by the NSA focuses on assessing the risk associated with the connectivity between IT and OT systems and steps recommended for improving the security of these connections.

For maximum cyber safety, ideally there should be no connections between enterprise networks and OT networks, but the agency admits that in some cases such connections are necessary. Organizations should review these connections and remove ones that are not truly required, and ensure that the remaining connections are secure, to prevent them from being abused in malicious attacks.

“These mitigations include fully managing all IT-OT connections, limiting access, actively monitoring and logging all access attempts, and cryptographically protecting remote access vectors,” the NSA said.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Over the past few years, the NSA has made public several cybersecurity resources in an effort to help public and private sector companies improve their security posture. The agency released advisories and other materials related to malware, actively exploited vulnerabilities, and the security of widely used internet services.

The advisory released last week is not the first OT-focused resource that has been made public by the NSA. Last year, the NSA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a joint alert urging critical infrastructure operators to take immediate measures to reduce the exposure of OT systems to cyberattacks. 

Related: NSA Publishes Guidance on Adoption of Zero Trust Security

Related: NSA Publishes Recommendations on Securing IPsec VPNs

Related: NSA Reports New Critical Exchange Flaws

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

CISO Strategy

SecurityWeek spoke with more than 300 cybersecurity experts to see what is bubbling beneath the surface, and examine how those evolving threats will present...

CISO Conversations

Joanna Burkey, CISO at HP, and Kevin Cross, CISO at Dell, discuss how the role of a CISO is different for a multinational corporation...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

CISO Conversations

In this issue of CISO Conversations we talk to two CISOs about solving the CISO/CIO conflict by combining the roles under one person.