OCTOBER: Verify OT Security Controls
It’s time to verify some of the key security controls you’ve addressed this year are actually working as planned. This is less fun, and much more important, than investigating and selecting the latest security solution. Companies are littered with security policies and security products that are deployed and doing little or nothing because they haven’t been maintained. It is the security equivalent of run to fail maintenance.
The focus this month is on verifying backups, recovery / RTO, and security patching. If you have more defined cyber maintenance activities add those to your week 41 task.
Week 39: Evaluate And Verify Backups
ICS in OT have achieved very high availability due to redundancy. This high availability decreases the frequency that backups are needed for recovery, and this often leads to less rigor in the backup process. This week’s task is to verify you can answer yes to the...
Week 40: Evaluate The Ability To Meet The RTO (2nd Pass)
You established a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) in Week 21. After recent weeks’ tasks on response and recovery, it’s time to take a second look at your ability to recover and meet the RTO. We can’t guarantee that any of our cyber security controls will prevent all...
Week 41: OT Security Patching Audit
As we come to the year’s end, it’s a good time to perform a first audit of the OT Security Patching Program you put in place in Weeks 36 – 37. If you have other OT cyber maintenance activities defined, audit these too. Is the team doing what they committed to do? A...