Cyber security
The Idaho National Laboratory and the Department of Homeland Security have announced the successful completion of the 100th iteration of the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Security training course.
Since April 2007, more than 4,000 cybersecurity professionals have completed the advanced course. Professionals from across the United States participated in a weeklong training.
The training courses provide hands-on approaches to understanding the network environment and identifying potential vulnerabilities that may led to compromising systems.
The course concluded with a Red Team and Blue Team exercise that takes place within an actual control systems environment. During that time, participants are either attacking infrastructure or defending it.
Class participant Tara O’Brien attended the courses, which she described as a “cybersecurity training lesson with the intent to learn as much as we can about ways to proactively defend our internal network.”
Eric Robinson a systems administrator in New England, traveled to Idaho to take the training course said he walked away a lot more knowledge.
“What we do is very important. We’re actually the ones who keep the things that you see in movies from happening,” Robinson said.
The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for protecting our nation’s critical infrastructure from physical and cyber threats.
Zach Tudor, associate laboratory director for National Homeland Security said he attended a class 10 years ago.
“Idaho is the center for cybersecurity education for the world. We help people both here in Idaho and around the nation and around the world. We help keep the lights on,” Tudor said.
He also said keeping our infrastructure safe and our information guarded is top priority.
“I think here in Idaho some of the things that we would be concerned about are chemical plants that make fertilizer we want to make sure someone doesn’t change the formula or possibly steal the formula. We want to make sure the lights stay on, that the automated irrigation systems that we have operate correctly, and that no one is trying to steal that data,” Tudor said.
One of the major types of cybercrimes Homeland Security is making sure to train professionals on is detecting phishing emails.
Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Tudor said once attackers are in a system, they can compromise the system and gain access to everything.
“Ransomware is the other things that we are really concerned about. There were stories in the news this week about hospitals and others that were being held at ransom because someone had encrypted the files on their systems and wanted money in return so they could go back to operating. We are working with Homeland Security and law enforcement to make sure those types of attacks are very rare and we understand them so we can help people prevent them,” Tudor said.
