With the rise of decentralised
renewable power sources like wind
and solar, and the rapid expansion of
distributed intelligent energy man-
agement devices, the energy space
itself is rapidly digitising by employing
IoT technology.
“We see the grid changing from
centralised energy production to
decentralised – and with that, the
intelligence goes all the way to the
edge, and the threat attack surface is
increasing on the client side,” Martinot
says. “All of that creates complexity
on the security aspect, because as the
energy transition is happening, people
aren’t participating in it.”
At the same time, while criminal
actors remain omnipresent, nation-
state actors are flexing their muscles
even more, especially in Asia, where—
Richard Bussiere,
Technical Director, Tenable, APAC“ Industry 4.0 is bringing the worlds of IT and
OT together at an accelerated rate. This results
in more IT devices being connected to or living
in OT environments, sometimes without the
organisation, even knowing”tensions between countries remain
high. These actors have far better
funding, deeper know-how and more
potent tools, posing a new challenge to
cyber defenders in the energy space.
These dynamics are playing out as
the Asian region struggles to close its
cybersecurity skills gap.
“As it stands, there’s a shortage of
talent possessing a combined skillset
of OT and cybersecurity. Previously
there was no ramp-up of OT enabled
skill, so the only choice we have now is
to take OT engineers and move them
to cyber, because that’s the quickest
fix. But there’s no ground-up OT skill
that exists yet, the sector is still too
new,” Martinot says.
MDR closes the gap: Compared to
hiring – let alone training – a workforce,
the Siemens-Tenable partnership,
harnessing MDR, offers a robust,
effective solution supported by world-
class expertise.248
FEBRUARY 2021SIEMENS ENERGY & TENABLE