Firms Adopting Sustainable Tech Urged to Ramp Up Cybersecurity

According to a cybersecurity specialist, companies looking to adopt green technologies to ease their shift to sustainability are being urged to bolster their safeguards against cyberattacks.

Pen Bumanglag, country manager for Exclusive Networks, security gaps and weak links across a firm’s network chain can easily be exploited by cybercriminals and even disgruntled employees.

“Operational technologies, the computerized systems used to control industrial operations and critical infrastructure services that control everything from the electricity grid to traffic light controls, often run on legacy equipment that have weak cyber security which prioritize efficiency over safety,” elaborated Bumanglag.

She also noted that the increased connectivity of a company due to the Internet of things and wide use of electronic devices only expands the attack surface that hackers can infiltrate.

Just a simple “hack of the grid or a compromised device that interacts with it, including consumer technologies such as smart meters and electric vehicles, could cause significant damage to many other systems and companies downstream.”

To mitigate this threat, Bumanglag urges companies to invest heavily in advanced cyber-security systems that utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) tools help organizations predict, monitor, and contain attacks, allowing timely responses that reduce the number of successful attempts and limit the impact of breaches,” she explained.

Improving the risk management of employees in case of a data breach should also be considered. This can be done through the crafting and implementation of cybersecurity standards that employees should be familiar with.

“They are the first line of defense for companies in any cyber-security measure, and it would be critical that they observe and implement basic cyber hygiene,” said Bumanglag.

Source: BusinessMirror