When you hear cyberattack, thoughts immediately turn to how much of your personal financial data and funds have been stolen. You wonder why your friends are asking about crazy emails they received from you. And if you are a company, you worry about having your financial data and confidential business information stolen. Reputational risk is huge. According to a new study, cyber incidents cost companies $3.86 million per breach on average, with compromised employee accounts being the most expensive item. But what about the risk of having a plant or processing unit shut down – might that be worse?

Few companies focus on cyberattacks on their operational technology (OT), but the number of attacks is rising sharply. Moreover, as industry digitizes its operational data to improve performance, enterprise risk systems drawing on this operational data to populate business models is increasingly being exposed to computer hacks. Minimizing that risk is a multi-component challenge, often exceeding the capabilities of existing company information technology departments.

IT people are charged with keeping accounting systems tallying, emails flying, remote workers connected, personnel data private, payroll checks rolling, and hackers excluded. Engineers, not IT specialists, are charged with assessing business operational structures and performance, while also understanding their vulnerabilities. Which weak point in a company’s operational infrastructure is most critical to the business? Locating that weak point is akin to finding the nail for which a kingdom was lost.

The energy industry’s push to digitize everything exposes it to potential cyber risks of unknown origin. Hackers are always testing the fortitude of IT systems, but a company’s OT systems may be its weakest link, though not fully appreciated. Intruders targeting IT systems are now finding easier entry via OT weak spots. Lean corporate structures have necessitated that IT and OT organizations be kept small, primarily because they are seen as an overhead expense and not a revenue generator. As a result, undertaking OT system cyber risk assessments are often an afterthought or limited in scope.

Hiring consultants to help assess OT cyber risk is one option, but time consuming and expensive. Use of automated systems employing artificial intelligence to assess complete OT and IT system operations may be the most comprehensive and quickest way to perform the task, but it requires trusting a new technology. The age of technologies assessing other technologies has existed for years, but it is now expanding as the corporate digital age emerges. The risk of operational system breaches is escalating, as well as the enterprise risk they entail. Protecting against OT cyberattacks is becoming critical.

For this Company Spotlight, we interviewed SecurityGate Co-Founder and CEO, Ted Gutierrez, about how they are helping companies in critical industry sectors that must maintain compliance standards and improve risk management practices to get ahead of issues that may threaten operations and team safety. SecurityGate is a Houston-based software company that provides an integrated risk management platform designed specifically for operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) cybersecurity. For more information on SecurityGate, please visit www.securitygate.io.

Background: In 2017, Ted Gutierrez and Cherise Esparza co-founded SecurityGate after spending most of their careers in internal risk management roles within large critical infrastructure companies employing industrial control systems (ICS), such as Shell, Enbridge, and Noble. The catalyst for the founding of SecurityGate was the increased focus and scrutiny placed on cybersecurity assessments following the hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Ted and Cherise knew there would be a huge opportunity due to their first-hand knowledge of the inefficient, manual, and largely unscalable processes utilized to identify cybersecurity risks associated with critical infrastructure within large corporations.

Value Proposition: Currently, teams managing critical infrastructure assess cybersecurity risks largely by working through numerous compliance checklists, which are typically completed via email threads and tracked:…..READ MORE

Emerson is acquiring Open Systems International (OSI) for $1.6 billion in cash (~23.5x NTM EBITDA). OSI provides enterprise automation solutions to power utilities across the world. As the energy industry continues its transition to utilize more renewable power sources, managing the power grid has become a major challenge to utility companies given the variability of when renewable power is generated and matching that supply with when electricity demand peaks. We expect smart digitized grids to play a critical role in ensuring reliable electricity can be provided to consumers while also reducing the industry’s carbon footprint.

Halliburton Labs will serve as an incubator/accelerator to early-stage companies that aim to help make energy cleaner and more affordable. Located at its Houston headquarters, it will provide these companies with access to technical and strategic resources. Its first participant, Nanotech, offers an innovative fireproofing and insulation solution.

EnerVenue offers metal-hydrogen batteries for energy storage applications at competitive pricing due to utilizing new low-cost materials. Metal-hydrogen battery technology has been widely used in the aerospace industry due to its superior performance and durability versus other battery technologies.

Energy Technology Musings

Cyberattacks Are Scary. Preventing Them Is Critical.