Risk in America's Critical Infrastructure Industries

America’s collective critical infrastructure sector risk is greater than ever, and supply chain security is a ubiquitous concern that keeps cyber executives up at night. is the very real possibility that a malicious threat actor has been dwelling in their critical supplier's infrastructure and can or has jumped, thanks to some unremediated vulnerability, to theirs. 

🎲 The executives I've spoken to worry that periodic assessments of the supply chain can't catch gaps and material deficiencies in supplier vulnerability management protocols in time. As organizations race to enhance their competitive edge with #AI, they’re increasingly concerned about #AIAttackVectors. One pervasive concern is that #threatactors have leveraged and compromised the privileged access they've given to any number of suppliers, which can or has allowed a threat actor to establish a beachhead in their enterprise. Many cyber operations teams see security controls reporting on anomalous activities moving south to north (#privilegeescalation) and east to west (#lateralmovement). Event misclassification can allow embedded threat actors (#dwellers) to live off the land by using “benign” OS and application native commands to spawn processes that further their malicious objectives. These commands, like Windows’ Powershell, can give threat actors the ability to evade an organization’s vaunted and expensive XDR capabilities to deploy ransomware droppers and other malicious code. 

🎲 There are concerns across the board (including at the board level) that if the activities described above have occurred, an advanced persistent threat actor (#apt) can be watching and waiting for the opportunity to deploy a next-generation, polymorphic AI-crafted malware payload. They're worried, and rightfully so, that if this happens, it can lead to a critical “break” or compromise in a critical business process. In certain industries, even a minute adulteration of data impacting its integrity, a change in a line of code or a data variable, for example, can have a devastating ripple effect on an organization’s business. It can impact corporate valuations, the integrity of products, compliance violations, the loss of service availability, and a host of other issues.  

🎲 The resulting #reputationaldamage and a loss of shareholder confidence can be devastating. In a scenario such as this, there is doubt that crisis management and PR teams will earn their keep; this I know this from prior involvement in "bet the company" crises (#DeepWatwerHorizon).  

🎲 For some enterprises, the scenario above has been in play for months, if not longer, and for them, it's not a question of "if" but "when" the mother of #materialcyberincidents hits. Don't be a laggard, be a leader.

🎱🪄 We at #Wealthyer have created the Integrated Cyber Risk Mitigation role to complement our portfolio of technical capabilities to help our clients sleep better at night.

Don't be a laggard, be a leader. I invite you to connect with us to learn more in a bespoke lunch and learn tailored to your organization and your needs.