Top 3 ways Ransomware enters an OT system

Threat actors spend many hours inside corporate networks before going for the kill. Often, they collaborate behind the scenes, figure out what's everyone's role in their upcoming attack, share expertise and negotiate with each other about the future revenue. Many attacks go undetected until ransomware encrypts their systems or the threat actors sell the data on underground markets. Despite recent takedowns of various marketplaces by law-enforcement, hackers still continue to find vulnerable applications, services, and other vulnerable initial access vectors and exploit them for their purposes.

The session will showcase how hackers enumerate environments and launch attacks against their targets to infiltrate organizations, steal intellectual property and carry out additional attacks.

Demo 1 – Intent-based Segmentation for IT/OT Network

Segmentation is often first steps to build a cyber-resilience network.  As networks and operations expand, organization has to ensure proper segmentation is in place. This would make it harder for threats to crossover to critical zones.  

In this session, we will demonstrate how the micro-segmentation solution with our FortiGate NGFWs  could easily create zones for assets such as Workstations and PLCs under the same VLAN. This micro-segmentation will increase the traffic control granularity by utilizing next-gen firewall policy and minimize the risks of lateral movement by external threat actors.

Demo 2 – Virtual Patching to protect legacy systems

Patch Management is key to protect industrial control system (ICS) from known vulnerabilities. However, patching for an ICS equipment often requires advanced planning and carefully thought out processes as cyber threat actors are known for using patches to create attack vectors into the systems.  

In this session, we will demonstrate how IPS Virtual Patching with FortiGate NGFWs helps customers enforce their patch management policies on schedules and defend their systems against known threats.

Demo 3 – Sandbox for OT Malware protection

Increasing threats of vulnerabilities are steadily rising, particularly in sensitive areas such as OT systems and critical process network, putting vital infrastructure at risk.  OT malware can range from modifying how an industrial process operates, through to disruptive or destructive attacks - what we call a cyber-physical attack.

In this session, we will demonstrate how AI-powered FortiSandbox integrated with Fortinet’s Security Fabric platform can help address the rapidly evolving and more targeted threats including ransomware, crypto-malware, and others across a broad digital attack surface. Specifically, it delivers real-time actionable intelligence through the automation of zero-day advanced malware detection and response.