AESCSF in the pursuit of building a Cyber Resilient Energy industry

The Energy sector has been receiving rampant attention from cyber threats in recent years. Just when we thought the pandemic could not get any worse, the energy industry has become vulnerable to cyber attacks. The attacks in the energy sector extend beyond the industry and immensely affect the people.

Why did the Energy sector become a target?

Upon digging deeper, the root cause of this situation has come to light. The energy industry has been suffering through in the digital era because of the reasons listed below:

• Interdependency: Convergence of IT & OT led to increased risks
• Usage of Legacy systems without security
• Security loopholes in the physical system/devices
• Distributed power systems with less security

The initiative

This has put a lot of pressure on the CIOs and CISOs to be more vigilant and come up with contingency plans. The impetus to bridge these gaps and build a robust cyber security infrastructure has led to the development of a framework known as AESCSF (Australian Energy Sector Cyber Security Framework) released by the AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) in 2018. It majorly involves the analysis of two aspects namely,

The AESCSF regimen

Security Framework (AESCSF) by AEMO. The Australian Energy Sector Cyber Security Framework (AESCSF) provides a set of well-recognized guidelines specifically tailored to the Australian Energy sector. The prime focus of this framework has been towards devising protocols and emergency management plans.

The cardinal elements of the AESCSF framework are summarized as follows:

• Identification of anti-patterns to detect the loopholes causing issues that lead to cyber crimes.
• Providing effective self-assessment toolkits to generate an accurate report with actionable insights. The built-in additional contextual guidance serves well in bringing more clarity to the current happenings of your enterprise.
• This framework has been entirely based on the energy sector, keeping the Australian guidelines in mind. The result? You now have a set of guidelines pertaining to the Australian locals, tailored to every specific subsector.
• Informative guidelines, educational resources, and relevant references are provided as links or downloadable documents to enhance the capability of the OT & IT environment.
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Mitigating cyber threats

Though many businesses already have models and systems to assess their maturity and criticality levels, they do not distinctly know which is the most suitable system for a particular issue. This is where Flexbox Digital comes into the picture. We have been helping several Australian companies to achieve 100% compliance and align well with the governance frameworks. We would love to help you achieve the same.

Here are a few quick bullets to give you an idea of how we will help your business to abide by the AESCSF which will not only secure your infrastructure but also protect you from sophisticated cyber attacks:

You are well aware that cyber threats are increasing exponentially every year. It would make a whole world of difference when you adapt to the proven techniques and solutions we offer. In the truest sense, you can make cyber security work for you. We understand your business security needs and we want to cater to those needs.