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neWs

Is your mining

machinery at risk

of a cyberattack?

ining companies have been warned not home at night’. It played on the psyche of that
Mto become complacent with their cyber individual that you need to go home at night
security protocols, especially with many op- because of your family.
erations transitioning towards automation “Now you can’t get onto a mine site with-
and remote working systems. out all the right safety gear, even if you’re vis-
Sapien Cyber chief executive Glenn Mur- iting, and you’ve got to be in accordance with
ray said the likelihood of a cyberattack on a OHS rules. Yet, I can walk on there with a
mine site was previously considered to be USB stick, and I can cause a lot more prob-
almost non-existent, but the advent of many lems with that USB stick than an OHS issue.
technology-based systems across the in- “We’ve got to bring cybersecurity into the
dustry meant operations were now at much age where OHS is today because at the end
greater risk of being infiltrated – and most of the day it’s a risk.”
companies have been slow in rolling out the In some cases, hackers will even bypass
necessary preventative measures. the company and target the insurance pro-
“If you look at any mine site around the viders, many of whom no longer cover “ran-
world, the biggest overhead to a company is somware” attacks.
really maintenance and manpower, and with Murray said the time for companies to act
shareholders putting so much pressure on was now and even urged more public dis-
these companies for better returns, there’s cussion on the prevention of cyberattacks.
a big push for automation,” Murray told Pay- Glenn Murray “We kind of treat soft security as being
dirt. secret,” he said. “There’s no sharing of in-
“That push was compounded when we propriate security systems are not in place formation, however, the good news is it is
had the COVID-19 outbreak last year and or effective. changing.
it forced a lot of companies to move into re- “If you can get in there and start control- “There is no silver bullet for cyber security,
mote working conditions. So, you’ve got this ling some of this equipment that the miners it’s a matter of having the defence in depth
push for automation, a push for working from are relying on, you could have a catastrophic layers concept; prepare your network, un-
home, the COVID-19 pandemic, ageing sys- event,” he said. derstand where those vulnerabilities are…
tems which have never ever been patched… “If you have a cyber-attack in the IT space, which a simple patch could fix. Then you
it’s all starting to add up to something going what’s the worst that could happen? Maybe have got to be able to defend.
wrong. damage to your brand reputation, losing Murray likened a cyberattack to a typical
“Think about the PC that you work on data, there might be a financial loss, there sporting contest whereby a criminal is play-
every day; if you never had one security may be some loss of inventory data. In my ing offence and the company under threat is
patch on that PC, how vulnerable would it mind, they’re pretty much all recoverable. always on the defence.
be to anything? There’s a lot of complacency But when you have cybersecurity attacks in “Defence is everything. If there’s a human
out there and it’s time to start changing that the operational technology, the worst-case in the loop who’s causing the attack, you
psyche.” scenario is it could be a fatality on site.” also need a human in the loop who is going
Murray cited the attack on the Florida Wa- Murray urged mining companies to start to defend the attack because the industry is
ter Utilities treatment plant earlier this year as treating cybersecurity in the same way the definitely not at a position where we can fully
an example of cybercriminals exploiting re- industry has adopted what is now widely automate a response to a cyberattack.”
mote working situations to gain access and considered to be world-leading health and Murray also warned a cyberattack can
impact an operation which put human lives safety practices. come from anywhere in the world, so be pre-
at risk. “Companies are kind of going down this pared to have all bases covered.
Hackers are understood to have com- path and saying, ‘well, I haven’t had a cy- “You don’t have to be on site, you don’t
mandeered the controls to the facility via berattack, why do I need these systems in have to be in a country, you don’t have to be
the TeamViewer troubleshoot system, then place?’ It’s seen as an overhead,” he said. in the same hemisphere,” he said. “You can
increasing levels of sodium hydroxide from “If you go back 20-30 years, this is exactly suffer an attack from anywhere in the world.
100 ppm to a dangerously high 11,100 ppm. where OHS was. Now you’re seeing min- So, the time to act is now, we can’t wait any
Murray said it was not unreasonable to ing companies lead the way in OHS. I can longer. The worst thing you can do is noth-
think a cybercriminal could infiltrate an au- still remember the campaign posters that ing.”
tonomous machine on a mine site, with had the old US recruiting-type look, pointing – Michael Washbourne
potentially deadly consequences if the ap- out of the poster saying, ‘we want you to go

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