The International Society of Automation's ISA99 standards committee on industrial automation and control systems security has formed a task group to conduct a gap analysis of the current ANSI/ISA99 standards. The analysis will address the rapidly evolving threat landscape, as demonstrated by the highly publicized Stuxnet malware.
The purpose is to determine if companies following the ISA99 standards would have been protected from such sophisticated attacks and to identify changes needed, if any, to the standards being developed by the ISA99 committee. The new task group intends to produce a technical report summarizing the results of its analysis by mid-2011, ISA says.
Stuxnet is a highly sophisticated computer worm that was first disclosed in the summer of 2010. It is the first known malware to have been specifically written with the intent to compromise a control system and sabotage an industrial process. Stuxnet’s capabilities are being well documented in the press, and some of these capabilities may migrate into new threats, ISA reports. Going forward, automation systems must be able to detect and either block or be able to recover from advanced Stuxnet-like threats.
The ANSI/ISA99 standards address the vital issue of cyber security for industrial automation and control systems. The standards describe the basic concepts and models related to cyber security, as well as the elements contained in a cyber security management system for use in the industrial automation and control systems environment. They also provide guidance on how to meet the requirements described for each element.
For more information, visit http://www.isa.org.
