The energy sector — spanning electricity, oil, and natural gas — is a nearly $124 billion industry. Its products travel through pipelines to homes and businesses across the United States, underpinned by a complex web of public and private entities.
A cyberattack that takes down a power grid, stops a train, or spikes fuel prices might sound like a movie plot. The Colonial Pipeline attack in 2021 proved it isn’t.
But as the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack proved in 2021, that day is no longer just a movie plot. Energy companies need to be more vigilant and proactive than ever. Which assets are internet-facing and could act as a point of ingress for an attacker? How are companies handling sensitive data of customers or intellectual property? Are suppliers secure, too, or could they introduce a supply chain vulnerability?
Synack provides strategic security testing to help your organization stay ahead of these threats. Annual pentests satisfy compliance — but they rarely provide the actionable data needed to truly strengthen your security posture over time.
Threats to the Energy Sector Are On the Rise
Nation-state actors including Russia are targeting energy infrastructure to steal intellectual property, disrupt economic prosperity or to retaliate for actions elsewhere on the globe. In one case, four Russian government employees were recently indicted for targeting the global energy sector.
Additionally, a McKinsey report noted an increasing number of cyber criminals are targeting critical infrastructure for profit. One assessment of a Puerto Rican Utility company concluded that tampering with smart meters in consumer-facing devices could lead to revenue losses of $400 million per year.
The distributed nature of energy infrastructure also expands the attack surface. The U.S. alone has 2.6 million miles of pipelines, and energy companies often manage thousands of suppliers — each a potential entry point for attackers.
How Transformational Security Testing Can Help
Synack provides a premier security testing platform that can help organizations make strategic security decisions based on testing data and insights.
– Synack can test IT systems, a core part of the energy sector, including networks, web and mobile applications, the cloud and APIs.
– The Synack Red Team (SRT), an elite community of 1,500 security researchers, provides a real attacker’s perspective with tactics, techniques and procedures similar to what’s seen in real world scenarios. The SRT also provides retesting to make sure vulnerabilities have been adequately addressed for remediation.
– Synack allows for visibility into all of your assessments in one place, so you know in real-time when a critical or high vulnerability is found, the remediation status of all your vulnerabilities and the current coverage of your attack surface (what, when and how assets are tested).
– Synack compiles actionable data to help you identify the root cause of vulnerabilities. These include the frequency of certain types of vulnerabilities like cross-site scripting across all your assessments. These insights can help solve endemic vulnerabilities and assist with training dev teams.
– Synack also provides third-party testing and OSINT for suppliers, which can help to address the issue of managing a complex supply chain.
– Finally, Synack gives an overall risk score for your organization based on testing data and benchmarks your organization against others with others in the same industry. Synack uses the same risk scoring methodology to rank your assets and assessments from weakest to strongest.
Synack currently works with a number of the top energy companies globally and The Synack Platform helps to solve a number of business problems that companies in the energy industry are facing from supply chain management to staying one step ahead of sophisticated adversaries.
Related reading: Getting the Right Pentesting Tool Upfront Saves Money • 3 Approaches to Security Testing for Third Parties • How Partners Increase Their Offerings and Revenue Growth with Synack
