Written by Gareth Chamberlain, Technical Support Engineer- Automation

In February, I wrote a blog about the serious threat of an attack on a power plant in Ukraine that cut power to over 80,000 people.

On the 13th July 2016 it was announced that the UK rail network had been hacked four times in one year.

mGuard with firewall

With over 1.65 billion passenger rail journeys per year, the UK relies on its Rail network to perform. Can we afford for the Rail network to be down or even worse compromised?

Most of the UK Rail network still operates with analogue technology which cannot be hacked remotely, but it is being gradually upgraded by the European Rail Traffic Management System. This is due to be in place by 2018.

At Phoenix Contact, we are aware of what cyber attacks can do to a business. The events reported on 13th July send a powerful reminder about how a system that is heavily relied on can be subject to an attack. Luckily no systems were compromised, but it would have been seriously easy for an attacker to do damage, not only to the network but to thousands of people on board.

A Kaspersky lab security researcher Sergey Gordechik told Sky News “The ability of cybercriminals to cause lasting damage to such internet-connected systems was “scary”.”

Phoenix Contact is running a Safe and Secure workshop in which I show a live demonstration on how easy it is for anyone with simple IT know-how to see exactly what is being broadcast directly on to the Internet and for attackers to interrogate or do reconnaissance on that site or unit. We are trying to show people that anyone is subject to an attack if the site is not secure or does not have an ethos of cyber security.

At Phoenix Contact we have the know-how and the technology to protect you, your assets and your customers.

For more information, contact us by email:  info@phoenixcontact.co.uk