Cyber warfare: it is already possible to prevent hostile hijacking of nuclear...

Cyber warfare: it is already possible to prevent hostile hijacking of nuclear facilities’ computers and systems

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ThetaRay is among the presenters at the upcoming Autonomous Unmanned Systems & Robotics Expo on November 25-26 2014

ThetaRay

The following is a realistic scenario, not fictional: the enemy succeeds in taking over the computers at a nuclear power station’s command center. The operators’ screens display no alert and they have no way of knowing the facility had just been remote-breached. The production array and critical parameters, including the reactor’s core cooling, are changing in an alarming way, but the perpetrators carefully saw to it that the monitoring system would not update technicians. The time it takes the on-site staffs to realize they are under attack, to track the hackers and avert disaster is way too long, posing a risk to both the reactor and to national security.
How realistic is this scenario? With 90% of all targeted cyber-attacks aiming at critical infrastructure sectors, there is no doubt a real change is called for in the overall cyber security doctrine of such facilities, along with a transition to innovative technologies to ensure more advanced security for computerized, operational and communications systems.
The cyber warfare arena has been heating up in recent years. Sophisticated hackers, hostile countries, disgruntled employees within organizations, terror groups and the like, are each capable of posing a major threat. The situation each CEO is concerned with nowadays, is someone taking over the organization’s central computing/operational systems and wreaking havoc in them.
This challenge of securing critical infrastructure has intensified considerably, since beyond integrating advanced computing, the industrial world is fast approaching a new age in which machines interface with online command and control systems. Progress indeed entails numerous advantages, but at the same time it exposes such organizations to cyber threats and real dangers on both the virtual and physical levels.
Traditional security measures used by almost any organization do not amount to much of a solution. They rely upon known elements an assailant can use: signatures of malware files, rules, pattern identification, behavioral modes and so on, in hope that given the opponent’s modes and means, they could be neutralized in advance. Such methods have worked in the past, and may still constitute some defense against foreseeable threats or ones which can be anticipated. Nevertheless, in a world undergoing a third industrial revolution and is already at an age when machines ‘talk’ with each other and make decisions – how do you deal with unprecedented attacks and schemes, ones we cannot even fathom?

Unmanned systems conference 2014 – Israel

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In order to defend critical infrastructure efficiently, it is important to begin by realizing that sophisticated, targeted hacks would not use run of the mill means. They will investigate and a coordinate ZeroDay breaches or launch APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats) in such manner that they will never be detected prior to achieving their objectives. Such orchestrated attacks require proactive defense as they abuse the unknown vulnerabilities which cannot be traced using existing solutions. What makes the situation all the more complex is the bringing of mechanical systems, hitherto offline, into the online world, when today’s known data security means cannot provide a solution to the system differentiations in these environments, in the framework of which old machinery generate communication and data, alongside cutting edge computing and smart control systems.
The groundbreaking solution introduced by the Israeli startup, ThetaRay, solves the problems of this multiplex, unfathomable threat to computerized and mechanical systems by linking up to the organization’s entire data array, operative systems and machinery, monitoring all the data they generate and analyzing all the sources at the same time.
This innovative ability allows ThetaRay to leverage organizational Big Data in order to discover anomalies, which would lead within seconds to uncovering threats and attacks on the organization, whether they originate from within or outside, as well as those unfolding secretly, as they had not been detected upon their initial infiltration into the organization. The solution, which is applied using cutting edge mathematical algorithms, has been patented following joint development by scientists from Yale and Tel Aviv Universities for over a decade.
This innovative approach is expressed in the company’s methodology: no more deduction based on changes in patterns and signatures or rules and alerts concerning deviations from pre-defined thresholds, but rather, system-level and global level connection to all organizational data generators, including networks and machinery. The company’s methodology further relies on applying mathematical tools to the organizational Big Data, without any prior knowledge regarding the data itself or any reliance on understanding potential threats.
The combination of technological, academic and industrial disciplines allows ThetaRay to carry out multi-dimensional analysis of data streaming in from various sources, in various formats and different timing, and issue effective, accurate and primarily rapid analysis, complete with an especially low level of false alarms. It is estimated that all this allows for the discovery of sophisticated attacks, or undiagnosed operational damages, to be drastically accelerated from several weeks to mere seconds.
No less important: the system filters the false alerts and even groups together all the instances related to the same single incident rather than issue numerous alerts, thereby enabling the organization’s security staff to increase response efficiency and prevent disasters.

ThetaRay is among the presenters at the upcoming Autonomous Unmanned Systems & Robotics Expo on November 25-26 2014