SNS: IIoT: A Clear and Present Danger

In This Issue
Week of 8/26/2019
Vol. 24 Issue 27

Special Letter: IIoT: A Clear and Present Danger

• The Digital Advantage Powers IIoT Adoption and Increases Cyber Risk
• Firewalls Are DOA for IIoT
• Microsegmentation Complexity Doesn’t Scale for IIoT
• Bad Actors Include Nation-States
• What’s at Stake: Control
• Secure Networking Is the Foundation of the Connected World
• About Jeff Hussey

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Publisher’s Note: There are times when a techno disaster is coming, everyone knows it, we all discuss it, and yet still it arrives. In the world of IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) and critical infrastructure, that time was already a few years back.

As you’ll see below, last week I had the pleasure of joining a panel on theCUBE, Silicon Angle’s podcast series on this subject, together with well-known China IP-theft expert Evan Anderson and Phillip Lohaus, similarly qualified on the government side and now at the American Enterprise Institute. As I’m doing here, it seemed the right idea to switch the conversation early on from “What if,” with regard to enemies in our infrastructure, to “What’s next?” Anyone who thinks, given China, Russia, and the US (throw in Iran and NK for good measure) and their proven APT abilities, that all of us are not already embedded with logic bombs in all of our critical infrastructures, is just not paying attention.

If true, and I believe it is, then why hasn’t anyone taken down a whole country yet?

The answer is simple: the knowledgeable experts on all sides fear this kind of “Cybergeddon” more than they fear a limited nuclear exchange. Why? Because the latter would be limited, with predictable death and destruction rates. The former would not.

In other words, we are now facing a new global security problem: in a world of infrastructure quickly dominated by machine-to-machine network communications, and with billions to trillions of completely insecure IIoT devices embedded therein – well, what could possibly go wrong?

In this week’s issue, Jeff Hussey, CEO of Tempered Networks who earlier founded the amazing F5 Networks, talks about how to respond to this threat. To all of our members who use electricity, drink water, or want to sleep at night, I know you’ll be interested in what he has shared with us in this week’s discussion. – mra.