Hack the Plant

In this episode, Bryson sits down with MITRE EMB3D co-founder Niyo Little Thunder Pearson. For nearly 20 years, Niyo has been at the forefront of protecting critical infrastructure systems. He previously led incident response for American Express, directing the company’s Security Operations Center during the LulzSec and Anonymous attacks, and worked to develop an adversarial cyber defense program for the nation’s third largest gas utility at ONE Gas Oklahoma. Now, Niyo has co-founded MITRE EMB3D, a groundbreaking global threat network aimed at enhancing the security of embedded devices. 

What is MITRE EMB3D? Who is the intended audience? What problems is it trying to solve? 

“There is such a gap that exists today on what we understand and how risk averse these [embedded] devices are. They do well and they operate well. They're built for what they're doing in a safety context, but the security was never brought forward with it,” Niyo said. 

Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t. 

Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology. 

In this episode, Bryson sits down with Mark Montgomery, Senior Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. For three years, Mark served as Executive Director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, created by congressional mandate to develop strategic approaches to defending against cyber attacks. Now, he directs CSC 2.0, an initiative that works to implement the recommendations of the Commission. 

What were the key recommendations of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission? What are the politics of cybersecurity? How do we ensure that our international partners have the same level of resiliency and recovery that we have domestically? 

“We'd like to fight our adversaries overseas. That means we have to fight with and through our allies and partners. So they have to have strong critical infrastructure as our forces arrive and execute their missions,” Mark said. 

Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t. 

Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology. 

Joe Marshall is a Senior IoT Security Strategist at Cisco Talos Intelligence Group. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Joe helped coordinate a multinational, multi-company coalition of volunteers and experts to find a technological solution. 

Bryson and Joe sat down to discuss his efforts in Ukraine, how he got the go-ahead from Cisco leadership, and more. 

“They were like, yeah, we can't even get accurate timing to work on our transmission grid because of jamming that is interrupting GPS communications,” Joe explains. “A week later I was sitting in my office and I went, ‘I wonder if we have something inside of Cisco that can actually help with this.’” 

Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t. 

Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.

In this episode, Bryson Bort is joined by Paul Shaver, Global OT Security Practice Lead at Mandiant / Google Cloud to discuss the cyber threat landscape. How did Paul’s military background play a role in his decision to start working with control systems? What is the difference between an advanced persistent threat and a regular threat? What does Paul think is the best way to protect against documented threats from nation-state actors?

“I think if we're not doing a better job of protecting critical infrastructure, protecting our assets, any one of the nation state actors could cause that level of mass scale outage or destruction of capability. It comes down to being better prepared to protect these environments,” Paul said. 

Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant. 

Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.

Claroty is a cybersecurity company that helps organizations to secure cyber-physical systems across industrial (OT), healthcare (IoMT), and enterprise (IoT) environments: the Extended Internet of Things (XIoT). 

In this episode, Bryson Bort sits down with Claroty director of research and industrial control system (ICS) vulnerability expert Sharon Brizinov to discuss everything ICS.

What are the most common vulnerabilities threatening ICS security? What’s the impact of cybersecurity controls standardization? And if he could wave a magic wand, what is one thing he’d change in the ICS industry? 

“Don't expose ICS equipment over the Internet,” Sharon said. “That's my wish. To eliminate all the ICS Internet-exposed devices.”

Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant. 

Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology. 

Psymetis creates Operational Technology (OT) security solutions that quickly and prevent electric grid outages and catastrophic infrastructure failures. Psymetis’ Werewolf system provides condition monitoring and threat mitigation for the power grid, detecting cyberattacks, equipment failures, and physical damage in real-time. 

In this episode of Hack the Plant, Bryson sits down with Psymetis CEO Robert Shaughnessy to discuss his work with Psymetis, challenges to innovation in the private sector, and the role of government in developing new technologies. 

What ecosystem problem is Psymetis solving? How is the federal government involved? What threats do our critical infrastructure systems face? How is China involved?

“We're not talking about shooting wars, we're talking about wars where adversaries–to include economic adversaries–can have advantage,”  Shaughnessy said. “As we're looking out over the next couple of years… there's a lot of frightening indicators that want us to plan for these events, knowing the capabilities of our tier one adversaries.” 

Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant. 

Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.

As America’s Cyber Defense Agency and the National Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) leads the national effort to understand, manage, and reduce risk to the cyber and physical infrastructure that Americans rely on every day. 

In this episode of Hack the Plant, Bryson sits down with CISA Director Jen Easterly to discuss her work on leading CISA’s critical infrastructure mission, implementing efforts to make products Secure by Design, and working with private companies to combat ransomware.

How has CISA’s role evolved since 2018? How do they advance critical infrastructure protection and cyber defense? What are Director Easterly’s priorities for 2024? And if she could wave a magic wand, what is one thing she would change? 

“We need transparency so that we can all work together to protect the ecosystem, because the actors are not ever going to fight fair,” Easterly said. “We need all the collective strength of the community to keep Americans safe and secure.”

Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant. 

Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.

I’m joined by Jesse Whaley, the Chief Information Security Officer at Amtrak, for this episode of Hack the Plant.  Amtrak is  the nation's largest passenger rail service provider and one of the most complex and critical transportation systems in the world. 

We discuss what it takes to oversee Amtrak’s digital assets and infrastructure, and what it takes to keep them secure. 

“The company had a safety culture. Before every meeting before every job site that workers went out to on the railroad to do work. They did safety briefings … I got alignment on hey, this should be our standard company safety and security briefing, but with a whole pillar of safety as being cybersecurity. Since I did that, before every meeting, before every crew goes out to a job site, before every activity, there is a safety and security briefing, and it follows this essential template which highlights and reinforces cybersecurity.”

We also cover the impressive talent pipeline and  team and workforce development programs Jesse put into place to staff Amtrak’s cybersecurity efforts. Join us to learn more.

I’m joined by Dan Ricci, founder of the ICS Advisory Project, for this episode of Hack the Plant.

The ICS Advisory Project is a free, open-source platform that helps asset owners across 16 critical infrastructure sectors stay secure by identifying threats in their environments.

“I saw a gap in the community. There's good data that's coming at us…but no one did anything to take and make that data more digestible through visualization. So I decided, okay, well, I'm just going to do it now. I’m going to take the the data that I have been cleaning up and monitoring for like the past two years, and I'm going to put it together and visualize it, trying to build a tool that's more practical and usable by that asset owner, who may not have a cybersecurity background.”

We discuss how data visualization translates into more accessible information for the ICS operators on the ground who need the information - and how the data in the platform is maintained.

Join us for an interesting - if technical - discussion about how data from CISA and other agencies can be utilized by asset owners through ICS Advisory’s platform.

I’m joined by Jason Healey, a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs, for this episode of Hack the Plant. Jason is a pioneer of cyber threat intelligence, with experience spanning fifteen years across the public and private sectors. 

Today, we discuss a recent article Jason published at Lawfare, looking at 25 years of White House cyber policies, from the Clinton to the Biden administrations. We explore how regulatory policy has become more sophisticated over time, and the evolving nature of threats.

“One of the biggest debates right now amongst the international affairs community – is cyber really dangerous? You've got some people that look at how cyber capabilities have been used over the past two decades, how it's currently being used in Ukraine, and say, ‘it’s difficult to use this stuff, and frankly it’s not as dangerous as we think.' I tend to be on the more pessimistic side … if you're targeting things made of ones and zeros or things made of silicon, cyber can often not be that big a deal. But with smart grids, industrial control systems, and other things connected to the internet, it's not just things made of ones and zeros and silicon.  Cyber attacks can take down  things made of concrete and steel.”

To what extent is cyber necessary as part of a defense strategy? How has our regulatory approach changed over 25 years?  Join us to learn more.