Project blog

Cybersecurity For Public Utilities Solutions II

Cyberattacks launched on municipal utility companies are similar to attacks in any other industry. However, the potential for OT attacks and the dangers of a major service disruption has raised the stakes. Miller outlines in this article [1] the most common cybersecurity attacks that have affected municipal utility companies. 

Denial of Service 

Attacks that stop users from accessing essential networks are typically referred to as denial of service (DoS) or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. A DoS attack is initiated by a single attacking computer. A DDoS attack is launched by multiple attacking devices. While the attack is in progress, companies can’t access the means to provide services. These attacks have serious implications for any company, but the interruption of essential services like electricity or running water can quickly become disastrous.  Unfortunately, given the lack of training many utilities are particularly vulnerable to denial of service attacks. While these attacks are difficult to deal with, more work on raising an awareness of the issues and possible counter-measures would be invaluable.

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Cybersecurity For Public Utilities Solutions I

In 2021 Jason Miller wrote an article on cybersecurity for municipal utilities stressing that cyber-attacks were increasing every year and greatly impacting a wide range of high-profile targets from governmental agencies to financial and insurance organizations, hospitals and other health facilities, and educational institutions. Of particular concern in many countries, he points out, is the situation on local levels where local governments with municipal utilities are often under-funded with poorly trained staff [1]. Unfortunately, the solutions he offers do not take into account the range of problems facing municipal utilities. Many are not aware, however, of how municipal utilities have become targets for “nation-state actors” and the possibly disastrous effects of an attack.

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Welcome CS-Connect!

In CS-AWARE-NEXT, the role of our unit, CERICT-Università di Salerno, is to design, develop and evaluate, a collaboration layer for the ecosystem, aimed to support the organisations in their activities toward improved security.

We are actually collecting all the requirements from the use cases and we have had very interesting discussions with the organisations in the ecosystems in Larissa and in Foggia, to find out what is actually needed to ensure adequate support to the ecosystem. And indeed, we have collected quite a few requirements, some of which were expected by us (aren’t we all collaborating on something after all) but many were surprising and stimulating. We cannot spoil them as they are going to be in the Deliverable that Workpackage 2 is creating by February 2023. For example, we cannot tell you that we are considering different scenarios that involve the ecosystem in different activities, with different tools and different support by the collaboration system. As well as we cannot tell you that a flexible visibility mechanism for the information shared will allow to accommodate different ecosystem with diverse cohesion. And, of course, we cannot tell you that the visualization of the system will be based on the CS-AWARE visualization but contextualized with the goal of the scenario. Sorry. What we can tell you now is what is the name of the tool! In fact, during the General Meeting in Wien, stimulated by the words, dubiously attributed to the Bard of Avon:

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Startups in Europe – and elsewhere

CS-AWARE Corporation is not only one of the partners of the CS-AWARE-NEXT Consortium, but also the main vehicle for the exploitation of all project outcomes and results. The company itself is a successful spin-out of the previous CS-AWARE Innovation Action and considered as a success story because we exhibited commitment to build a sustainable business that will help local public organisations increase their awareness and build capacities to successfully fight with cyber security threats. This might be our European perspective on how to build a business. Let us see a little more far away…

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Turning the Internet into a meaningful (data) space!

Last week I attended the works of the 1st International Conference on FAIR Digital Objects. One may wonder what FAIR Digital Objects are – and then visit the Web page of the Fair Digital Objects Forum to learn more.

Before entering the details of what FDOs are, it may be worth to spend some little time and explain what FAIR is about. More and more projects and research ‘endeavours’ and ‘ventures’ take it as a prerequisite, that all data to be collected – processed – managed – stored should be FAIR. So here it is:

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A great base scenario for CS-AWARE-NEXT?

Don’t remember if have heard of this incident before, but this could actually be a great base scenario for CS-AWARE-NEXT. It is about the May 2021 ransomware attack on the Health Service Executive (HSE).

At the end of the year 2021, a report was published, that had been commissioned by the Health Services Executive (“HSE”). The report counts about 100 pages – so it is not what one might regard as a convenient reading for an evening discussion. However, there are many generic cybersecurity issues that the report raises that are to be addressed in the CS-AWARE-NEXT project

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The hard thing about impact

It is now over 8 years that the ‘Hard Thing about Hard Things’ has become a best-selling reader on entrepreneurship. The reason that the audience liked the book may be because the author is not afraid to take for granted that mistakes happen and are an inevitable, or as I prefer to call: a ‘shadow capital’ for every enterprise and venture.

Ben Horowitz, the author of the books, is apart from businessman and investor also active as blogger, devoting time and energy to communicate his ideas and also have them tested with a wider audience.

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The world is changing…

… and startups are considered as agents of change.

Young people now, as well as less young ones, quit their jobs ‘en masse’ and find substance and what each of us may understand in our own, individual ways as ‘meaning in life’ – this is what became to get known as the Great Resignation or the Big Quit.

Many of us have been praised within conservative education and life cultures, feeling that taking risks is worth once you have a big organisation to support you. Many of us think like this, and many of us act like this – this is what finally contributes to make change not easy to accept and promote a culture that does the opposite: hinder change.

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Another attack…

Last week, another attack against the UK’s National Health Service: this time the target was the NHS 111, a hot line helps people get the right advice and treatment when they urgently need it. So it is not about cinema ticket reservations or something else that one would consider as less important, less critical or less urgent.

You can read about this here and here. So it is nothing new at all – same attacks took place last May in Carinthia in Austria. You can also read about this here as well.

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CS-AWARE Next Project successfully launched!

A new Horizon Europe research project to help organisations and local & regional networks improve cybersecurity awareness and collaboration.

A pan-European consortium led by the University of Oulu in Finland has successfully launched a new Horizon Europe project. The project is called CS-AWARE-NEXT and builds on the legacy of the CS-AWARE project, that was part of the Horizon 2020 Programme, a predecessor of Horizon Europe. The project application has been been successfully evaluated for all three dimensions related to scientific excellence, societal and economic impact and the quality of the research plan implementation.

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