Today begins Cybersecurity Awareness month led by the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). CISA will focus:
…on ensuring the public is practicing good “cyber hygiene,” easy and common-sense steps to protect yourself online. We urge everyone to implement these four easy things you can do on your devices:
- Implement multi-factor authentication on your accounts and make it 99% less likely you’ll get hacked.
- Update your software. In fact, turn on automatic updates.
- Think before you click. Over 90% of successful cyber attacks start with a phishing email.
- Use strong passwords, and ideally a password manager to generate and store unique passwords.
Emerson’s Director of Cybersecurity Strategy, Governance and Architecture, Michael Lester, kicked off this month with a LinkedIn post, Managing Cyber Risk and Threats: Returning to Foundational Principles. I’ll excerpt the introduction and invite you to read his post.
Every day there is news of another cyberattack. There was the SolarWinds hack earlier this year that affected major companies, including Microsoft, Intel and Cisco; the Colonial Pipeline attack that disrupted oil and gas supply due to precautionary operational shutdown; and the LockBit ransomware attacks that have most recently impacted global consulting firm Accenture, and the list goes on. Revelations of hacking from independent criminal organizations and state-sponsored groups are causing increasing levels of concern within company boards, government directorates and legislative bodies.
These cyberattacks are not necessarily using new attack techniques, and they are unfortunately becoming more severe and more frequent. While no manufacturing organization can guarantee it will never be affected by one, there are foundational actions business and cybersecurity leaders can take to remove silos, operate holistically and implement best practices to reduce risk from these types of threats.
We know these concerns are top of mind for the industry and work with customers every day to help create a strong foundation and minimize risk. Here is the basic guidance we most frequently recommend our manufacturing customers put in place.
Read the article for more as Michael shares guidance including:
- Engage in Business Operations Mapping
- Thoroughly Analyze Threats
- Assess Cybersecurity Protection
- Develop A Defense Strategy
- Regularly Review & Update for Efficacy
Visit the Cybersecurity section on Emerson.com for more on the technologies, solutions and practices to build and maintain strong cyber-defenses.