Address
Dr Stelios Himonas
Permanent Secretary,
Ministry of Energy, Commerce, Industry & Tourism,
Republic of Cyprus
Honourable Minister,
Mr. Mayor
Distinguished guests,
Ladies & Gentlemen,
It is my pleasure to be here today to welcome you at the «CYpBER 2016» Conference.
I am sure that the other speakers will cover the general issue of cyber security quite extensively. So, I
will focus my remarks on the energy sector.
Today the Conference has gathered experts of the sector from all around the world. This is a great
opportunity to exchange knowledge, experiences and information about the ongoing cyber threats as
well as the means to protect the industry.
During the last decades, Operation Technology (OT) has experienced a significant development and
many new intelligent systems have been made readily available for Industrial Control Systems (ICS),
offering more capabilities, like IP networking, Remote Access from both Control Center and Field
devices, providing increased production speed, control and process efficiency.
These advances however, provide more opportunities to attackers.
There are many types of cyber-attacks: espionage, sabotage and denial or disruption of service. These
attacks can have the same or even worse effect and damage as military attacks. Such incidents may
cause the loss of life while at the same time keeping the anonymity of the attacker.
Cyber-attacks against the Energy Industry have been on the rise over the last 5 years, becoming more
complex and sophisticated.
These cyber-attacks target both Information Technology (IT) Systems and Operation Technology (OT)
Infrastructures. The US Department of Homeland Security says that it is the most attacked industry.
According to some reports, the systems of the United States Department of Energy were breached
more than 150 times between October 2010 and October 2014. Just before Christmas, regional
Ukrainian power companies reported that they had suffered outages after outsiders remotely tampered
with their automatic control systems.
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