You were the first one in the office today, so you turned on the lights and cranked up the coffee maker, adjusted the thermostat and fired up the laptop as you watched the parking lot slowly fill and the migration to the corporate nest play out. Now imagine that scenario again where nothing worked. Not in a paranoid prepper sort of way that has you hoarding canned goods and digging a shelter in the lobby, but more in the spirit of “what if?” Calmly proceed with this thought experiment, and here’s why. Dragos, a firm specializing in industrial cybersecurity, recently released an assessment warning of increased activity in the oil and gas sectors, as well as constituent parts of the larger energy space. This potentially includes the telecommunications sector.

At work is a group they’ve come to call Hexane, malicious actors focused heretofore on targets in the Middle East. Critical infrastructure is their bread and butter, but their invasion of telecommunications systems is especially disconcerting.

Hope For The Best, Plan For The Worst

This news is ominous, even if you’re not in the oil and gas business. Even if you’re not an industrial complex. But this news should not command your full attention. Instead, you should manage your risk as effectively as you can and establish appropriate policies that will get you up and running quickly if any excrement happens to hit any fans near you.

ICS offers an array of Business Continuity Planning options, and we’ll also test the plans you have in place to make sure they do what you think they do. Think about that next time you flip on a switch.