Health Check Assessment: Enhancing Risk Efficiency for

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Overview A global liquid bulk operator in the chemical sector sought a cyber security firm with Operational Technology (OT) experience to assess the environment’s security posture and define suitable baselines to achieve the target security levels. The objective was to improve global security governance and to ensure a consistent security performance system was prepared for implementation.

Business Case

Chemical plants face cybersecurity risks arising from legacy Process Control Systems (PCSs) that have been updated and expanded over the years. As the client looked to modernise their OT systems for enhanced operational efficiency, they realised that they needed more visibility into connected devices and access points in order to mitigate risks and maintain a robust risk posture.

As the client expanded their systems, they also realised that the lack of visibility into their attack surface meant they were unable to prioritise their risk mitigation actions. Documenting security hardening baselines is a proven approach towards meeting complex security and compliance requirements for internal and external teams that are involved in maintaining the PCS and achieve governance in OT security.

Problematically, enterprise IT and industrial OT require different security controls. The client sought a team with deep domain OT experience and experience with chemical business processes to manage safety requirements and process associated with System Under Consideration (SuC). They wanted a trusted partner who would be able to apply best OT security practices, had good knowledge of the main OT vendors and their solutions, and work with their OT System Custodian’s team instead of applying an IT approach to the system assessment.

The OT System Custodian was concerned about admitting an unknown party in a critical network. After speaking with Applied Risk, the OT System Custodian had confidence that the proposed assessment approach would not impact business operations.

Case Study Health Check Assessment: Enhancing Risk Efficiency for Major Chemical Leader

“Applied Risk gave us meaningful visibility into our security posture because their knowledge of OT allowed them to provide us with security baselines that were both effective and non-disruptive. We were guided on how to focus on actual threats facing our systems for a more robust OT security posture.”

- OT Security Manager

Our Approach

The program followed Applied Risk’s Methodology ARM™: Assess, Remediate and Manage which enabled the business with thorough visibility into the state of OT security followed by actionable recommendations.

Working closely with the OT System Custodian, Applied Risk started with an OT Security Health Check. To make sure we captured the full scope of the infrastructure, Applied Risk’s team used carefully selected advanced technologies to detect and map out assets. Ruling out false positive findings and confirmation of the scope by the OT System Custodian concluded the network discovery and technical assessment exercise.

Then, the IEC-62443 Health Check Assessment was completed providing deeper insight into the company’s security posture. Applied Risk’s OT expertise enabled assessing whether a finding posed an actual risk to the organisation’s systems. A concise overview of findings was delivered based on Applied Risk’s extensive knowledge of industrial protocols, configuration capabilities of system components, and threat vectors. By filtering out findings with only theoretical threat, the client gained insight into risk that is actionable and requires improving to thwart emerging cyber threat.

The security baselines were developed to ensure that system changes would not impact the security level of the components. The baselines should be used to define both the initial system configuration and set the standard to assess against to identify deviations at an early stage. Next to that a governance process was implemented to keep the security baselines ever green.

Finally, recommendations were provided for short- and medium-term improvements, which were directly aligned with IEC-62443 references so that the client could manage the improvements from a risk treatment tool.


Assess Situational Awareness and a quick scan with focus on weak network entry points, known and unknown risks and potential vulnerabilities

Manage Empower OT System Custodian to manage and sustain a safe and reliable operation in a cost-effective manner.

Remediate

Prioritised approach with risk based actionable remediation steps aligned with IEC-62443.ARM ™

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Successful ImpactThe following areas were positively impacted:

Complete visibility was gained into the current state of security through identified and uncovered assets and vulnerabilities;

Enhanced security governance and security risk efficiency was achieved by incorporating the security baselines into risk management tools;

Security requirement clauses were incorporated into supplier and service provider contracts.

Overall, the client was able to improve the quality of preventive maintenance process and was provided a tool that could be implemented on all plants.


Documents

Health Check Assessment: Enhancing Risk Efficiency for