The Cuckoo’s Egg & How it Relates to Cybersecurity
Let me be the first to say that I don’t normally do book reviews. Frankly, I thought I left them behind years ago when they were required assignments for my undergraduate classes. Nevertheless, I find myself writing one today, not because I must, but because there are so many cybersecurity professionals…
The New Year is a great time to make resolutions, but often as the weeks pass, these resolutions fall to the back burner. A study completed in 2016 showed that less than 25% of those who set a resolution successfully followed that resolution for a year.1 When we think about…
The Perfect Match of Lockpicking and Cybersecurity
First off, an introduction is in order. My name is Greg Houser, and I’m one of the new fish here at exida (no, that’s not a typo – the ‘e’ is lowercase in “exida”). And…
Preparedness is defined as being in a state of readiness (Webster, 2022). This can take many different forms but when it comes to cybersecurity, a big part is knowing what threats lie in wait within the cyber landscape. It’s difficult to prepare against threats or vulnerabilities you don’t know exist. Being able…
The thought of tackling a threat model (TM) might not be the most appetizing to some people. Doing a quick Internet search, someone could get stuck under a mountain of acronyms and terms. I mean, what is a CVSS anyway? And then there are the diagrams, attack trees and feedback loops that…
Block that attack! Getting IEC 62443 Cyber Certified (Part 4)
This is the next in a series of blogs and papers on the benefits of cyber certification. You can read part 1 here , part 2 here, and part 3 here . Certification provides you with the opportunity to work with an experienced cyber team here at exida, and…
Block that attack! Getting IEC 62443 Cyber Certified (Part 3)
This is the next in a series of blogs and papers on the benefits of cyber certification. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. Certification provides you with the opportunity to work with an experienced cyber team here at exida, and the vast knowledge of cyber…
Pipeline Safety and Security – Why are we still not prepared?
It’s interesting that I had been preparing a webinar on pipeline safety and security since there have already been numerous incidents reported regarding pipeline accidents and leakage. Now the latest incident concerning Colonial Pipeline and the ransomware attack by Darkside, a so-called extortion group,…
Attack on Florida Water System Highlights Weak Security Protections for Critical Infrastructure
The Oldsmar Water Treatment Facility in Pinellas County Florida was compromised by hackers on February 5th. Hackers took advantage of the TeamViewer application that was still installed on the water facilities network to gain remote access1. The TeamViewer was originally installed to allow for status checks and troubleshooting of…
When we were doing safety system designs in the 1980s, there was no Windows, there was no TCP/IP, there was no in Ethernet. We had to write our own protocols to transmit data to our I/O and our controllers.
Fault-finding was always a challenge . What we ended up…
Block that attack! Getting IEC 62443 Cyber Certified (Part 2)
This is the next in a series of blogs and papers on the benefits of cyber certification. You can read part 1 here. Certification provides you with the opportunity to work with an experienced cyber team here at exida, and the vast knowledge of cyber experts worldwide codified in…
IEC 62443 Cybersecurity Certification for Medical Devices
exida has traditionally been involved in industries such as oil and gas, chemicals, power generation and automotive. While these are a diverse set of industries, many of the techniques that we use such as FMEDA (Failure Modes Effects and Diagnostic Analysis), Risk Assessment, Threat Modelling, etc.…
Block that attack! Getting IEC 62443 Cyber Certified (Part 1)
This is the next in a series of blogs and papers on the benefits of cyber certification. Certification provides you with the opportunity to work with an experienced cyber team here at exida, and the vast knowledge of cyber experts worldwide codified in the IEC 62443 family of…
This is the first in a series of blogs and papers on the benefits of cyber certification. Certification provides you with the opportunity to work with an experienced cyber team here at exida,. It also allows you to gain access to our network of cyber experts worldwide codified…
Grasping the Power of the (Stuxnet) Virus (or What I did during the COVID-19 Pandemic)
The travel and group meeting restrictions from COVID-19 have allowed me to catch up on some reading about viruses; not the type that get transmitted to humans. This article is about the Stuxnet virus and what I learned from the book “Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of…
The exida explains blog has been around for over five years and gives expert and sometimes candid insight into the world functional safety, alarm management, and industrial cybersecurity.