FUNCTIONAL SAFETY IN TIMES OF RISING CYBERCRIMINALITY Dr Alexander Horch*
Every production process has inherent risks, and cybercriminality is now one of these risks. To achieve the greatest possible degree of safety and security in production processes, it is important for enterprises in the process industry to implement effective separation of their process control and safety systems.
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ecently in Australia, some of the biggest businesses have been hit by cyber attacks from criminal elements. The Cadbury factory in Tasmania was the first Australian company to be hit, with the Petya ransomware bringing down its IT systems. The same cyber attack was also responsible for shutting down the monitoring system of Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Petya is the name given to a ransomware program that holds data hostage by scrambling it until a payment is made. It not only encrypts files but also a computer’s master boot record, thus ensuring that nobody can retrieve the affected information without first paying the criminals for a key.
38 WHAT'S NEW IN PROCESS TECHNOLOGY - SEPTEMBER 2017
Australia’s cyber safety minister, Dan Tehan, has warned that more Australian businesses could still be impacted by cyber attack. Leading industry analysts say that Australian companies are under constant cyber attack and that unreported attacks are rife. For the process industry, it is crucial to take precautions against cyber attacks by having a safety system independent from the process control system. This offers the highest degree of safety and security in safety-critical applications. To better understand the interaction of safety and security, it is helpful to clarify several terms. There are numerous definitions of safety; however, a general definition is that safety is the absence of danger. This means that a condition is safe when there are no
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