Shell has awarded a contract to Yokogawa and Cisco for the supply of a ‘comprehensive security management solution for plant control systems,’ a component of Shell’s SecurePlant initiative. SecurePlant was co-developed by the three companies and will now proceed over the next three years with implementation at around fifty Shell plants globally. SecurePlant includes OS patches and anti-virus pattern files for control systems and the provision of real time and proactive monitoring of solution delivery, as well as a help desk operation to manage this solution.
A report from the International association of IT asset management lambasts the US federal government for its ‘IT insecurity.’ The report observes that ‘by focusing largely on hacks and other breaches, elected officials and agency administrators are failing to take a bottom-up approach to the purchase, control, inventory, and proper destruction of such IT assets as software, computer hard drives and mobile devices.’ The government spends about $10 billion a year on IT security, ‘with no meaningful standards and controls in place,’ resulting in ‘huge vulnerabilities that can easily be exploited from those inside and outside of the system.’
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