TPT July 2018

Pipel ines Cyberattacks on US gas pipeline infrastructure underscore vulnerability deriving from third-par ty providers At least four US pipeline companies saw their electronic systems for communicating with customers shut down over a few days this spring. Three of these confirmed that their outages resulted from a cyberattack. As reported by Bloomberg News , Oneok Inc, which operates natural gas pipelines in the Permian Basin in Texas and the Rocky Mountains region, said on 3 April that it had disabled its system as a precaution after determining that a third-party provider was the “target of an apparent cyberattack.” A day earlier, Energy Transfer Partners (Dallas, Texas), Boardwalk Pipeline Partners (Houston, Texas), and Chesapeake Utilities Corp’s Eastern Shore Natural Gas (Dover, Delaware) reported malware-related communications breakdowns. (“Cyberattack Hits Data Systems of At Least Four Gas Networks,” 4 April) “We do not believe any customer data was compromised,” said the Latitude Technologies unit of Energy Services Group, which Energy Transfer and Eastern Shore both identified as their third-party provider. Latitude said in a message to customers that it was “investigating the re-establishment of this data,” but neither the company nor the US Department of Homeland Security offered further comment. Phil Muncaster of UK-based Infosecurity magazine noted that a Siemens-Ponemon study from 2017 claimed that 68 per cent of oil and gas companies had experienced at least one such “compromise” over the previous 12 months. Fred Kneip, CEO of CyberGRX (Denver, Colorado), told Mr Muncaster that the latest attacks on US gas pipeline infrastructure highlight the importance of third-party risk management. In Mr Kneip’s opinion, it is irrelevant how well an organisation protects its own perimeter if third parties with weak security controls create openings for easy exploitation. While even the most thorough risk assessment is no guarantee that a target will be malware-free, he said, “It can uncover red flags pointing to weak security controls that leave [the network] vulnerable.” A shor tage of Canadian pipeline capacity is blamed for overdependence on the US market and lost revenue According to a new study released on 8 May by the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based public policy research and educational think tank, despite the steady growth in crude oil available for export, new pipeline projects in Canada continue to face delays related to environmental and regulatory impediments as well as political opposition. The resulting lack

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