Cybersecurity for the Energy and Utility Sector

The Axonius Cybersecurity Platform aggregates, normalizes, deduplicates, and correlates data from energy and utility companies’ existing technology solutions — IT, OT, and IoT. With a comprehensive view into the asset environment, including all relevant vulnerability and operational state information, energy and utility companies can protect critical infrastructure from damaging cyber attacks and service disruption.

HOW THE ENERGY AND UTILITY SECTORS PROTECT CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WITH THE AXONIUS PLATFORM   

Utility companies face unique cybersecurity challenges, including nation-state attacks. Digital transformation has helped modernize the industry, removing reliance on outdated, unmeasurable assets. But taking utility companies from analog to digital introduces a lot of complexity — including new cyber threats.

Connecting pieces of critical infrastructure to traditional IT systems opens up new attack paths for threat actors. Before critical infrastructure organizations can protect their networks, they need to understand what assets they have, the state they’re in, who has access to them, and whether they are or can be compromised. That’s why energy and utility companies rely on Axonius.

CYBER THREATS IN THE ENERGY AND UTILITIES SECTORS

Legacy equipment: Legacy utility equipment was not built with cybersecurity in mind. Many OT systems are part and parcel of utility and energy companies’ environments, but they can’t be updated to fit modern cybersecurity requirements. Taking these systems offline to replace (or even fix) them may be impossible due to the need for continuous, reliable energy and utility services. Legacy systems are inherently difficult to monitor, especially from remote locations and across distributed environments.

Lack of visibility: Antiquated analog technology can’t be measured in an IT environment. As energy and utility companies undergo digital transformation, visibility improves — but blind spots exist where OT doesn’t talk to traditional security systems. Correlating OT data with IT data is imperative, but requires holistic visibility, data normalization, and control.

Geopolitical campaigns: While plenty of industries have to deal with nation-state threat actors, fewer are part of critical infrastructure. Operators of energy and utility environments must have total visibility into the entire asset environment, potential cyber threats, possible disruptions to service, equipment damage, and behavioral abnormalities.