From: Offshore Technology International
Written by Paul Talbot, Chief Technology Officer of adept4
In this climate of high risk and with such huge amounts at stake, safety has always been a critical issue.
There are few industries where risk and reward play such a prominent role as in the oil and gas sector. The amounts associated with the industry are significant – the UK’s global oil and gas supply chain contributes circa £6bn every year to the Exchequer and exports around £7bn worth of goods and services – but the risks are substantial too.
In this climate of high risk and with such huge amounts at stake, safety has always been a critical issue. But according to Ernst & Young’s recurring survey of energy executives, IT security, particularly the threat to companies’ operations and energy infrastructure, only entered the industry’s top ten concerns this year – clocking in as a new entrant as the ninth most important industry concern of 2013.
Few, if any industries have such global reach and consequently such wide-spread ramifications if something goes awry. With threats such as terrorism and piracy looming large, ensuring the security of both the operation, workforce and the wider industry supply chain is key.
In the U.S., 40% of all cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure assets in 2012 occurred against the energy sector. These attacks, specifically targeting oil and pipeline systems, continue to grow at an alarming rate. Conservative estimates value the cost of running an oil rig for a day at between one and three million pounds, so even a slight system disruption can have a devastating impact.
Energy facilities have also become favorable targets for dissident groups due to the increasing attention of world leaders towards oil and gas, as consumption outstrips supply, with an increasing threat posed by global terror networks – from both physical and online attacks.
Oil and gas IT systems also represent a treasure trove of intellectual property for hackers less motivated by politics or fame than by potential wealth gained by selling critical geophysical assessments, new proprietary rig or pipeline technology or competitive financial data. Valuable data like this could have devastating consequences in the wrong hands and needs to be kept and accessed securely.
Architects, engineers and other members of the supply chain work with this valuable information on a daily basis and it needs to be kept safe. In the oil and gas industry, ensuring that your supply chain is secure is another part of the safety puzzle. It is pointless installing the latest security and firewall protection if your supply chain isn’t investing in their security or are unaware of the steps they need to take to protect their (your) data.
Health and safety is another critical issue in the industry, with huge numbers of specialist staff working offshore in a notoriously dangerous industry. In order to ensure a safe working environment and safely monitor staff and their actions, vast amounts of sensitive data on employees need to be collected, processed and then securely stored on company systems.
Making sure that unnecessary risk is avoided and managed is a critical and highly complex part of successful operations. In order to mitigate the huge risks which are an everyday reality in the industry; security, compliance and regulation have become the holy trinity for companies operating in the oil and gas sector.
As many of the commonly used Microsoft technologies reach end of life and next generation cloud-based services become more commonly used, most companies, including those in the oil and gas sector, are now evaluating the risks and rewards associated with cloud-based systems.
Although moving to the cloud brings with it a host of efficiencies, companies in the oil and gas sector migrating to the cloud need to be aware of the possible associated risks. Data stored in the cloud can be more vulnerable to hack attacks and IT providers need to have appropriate systems in place to mitigate and manage the significant potential threats which companies operating in this sector face.
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