CYBERSECURITY:
GETTING BAS UP TO SPEED
Historically, cyberattacks predominantly
impacted IT, but now they
are starting to become more common
in building automation. Physical
security and cybersecurity are
becoming increasingly intertwined
(Figure 4). The building automation
world is not prepared to handle
this alone.
Due to their lack of fundamental
security controls, BAS IoT devices
are soft targets for cyber criminals
and they can be easily hacked and
added to botnets, which are used
to launch DDoS attacks against
organizations.4 There are many
growing threats, the likes of
WannaCry, Petya and NotPetya.
Facilities managers have the ability
to change passwords, but in the
past they did not need to since that
was the responsibility and jurisdiction
of IT. Likewise, the building
automation industry and controls
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
User-centric
communication
Managed by
IT experts
Sensitive corporate
data
Unpredictable traffic
behavior
42 I ICT TODAY
FIGURE 4: Physical security is a big component of cybersecurity—but it's just
one side of it.
engineers viewed cybersecurity as
an issue for the IT side also. And they
were right to have viewed it that
way for many years. The OT
networks were very basic; they
were connected without complexity,
and they certainly did not have IP
addresses. Therefore, there was not
much to target, because there was
not much to access, except in the
case of a physical security breach.
With today’s IP-based complex
systems, networks and online
devices, many facilities managers
Machine to machine
communication
Maintained by
facility operations
Critical building
functions
Predictable
device behavior
FIGURE 5: IT and OT are different in many ways. It is important that they
work together to design robust and secure systems.5
are trying to beat the
learning curve that IT
already beat years before,
which is why IT personnel
are needed to support
the BAS side despite their
functional and technological
differences
(Figure 5). There are
many ways that an IT
team or IT partner can
help with the fundamentals
to get BAS
and facilities managers
on the right path
toward improvement: