ICS/OT Cybersecurity Year in Review 2021

Dragos is excited to present the fifth year of the annual Dragos Year In Review report on Industrial Control System (ICS)/ Operational Technology (OT) cyber threats, vulnerabilities, assessments, and incident response observations. The ICS/ OT* community has long suffered from more anecdotes on security than insights driven from data and real-world cases given the sensitivity of the subject. A lack of insights into the ICS/OT threat landscape and state of security prevent the community from having meaningful discussions on how to address today’s challenges. The Dragos Year in Review report was launched with the intent to add ground-truth reality into the discussion as an attempt to move the conversation and security efforts forward.

In 2021, the industrial community attracted high-profile attention. Headlines range from the compromise of a water treatment facility with intent to poison its community, to a ransomware attack against a pipeline operator that disrupted gas supplies to the southeastern United States. These reports underscored the potentially devastating outcomes a security breach of infrastructure could have on communities and a country’s economy. Beyond these public examples, there are numerous other matters that were never made public. Industrial organizations are becoming aware that they no longer fully understand the security risks surrounding their most important assets – their ICS/OT environments.

This report captures how a portion of the industrial community is performing and progressing, and highlights the areas that need improvement to provide safe, reliable operations into 2022 and beyond.