RISK ASSESSMENT IN OIL AND GAS/CHEMICAL INDUSTRY WITH RESPECT TO CYBER SECURITY

Due to our over-reliance on web-based communication and technology, cyber security threats are common now. This menace has mainly targeted manufacturing and chemical sectors. Services and operations can be seriously jeopardized by the cyber-attacks on the above-mentioned sectors exposing the entire population to a huge risk. Safe and secure access to sensitive information and other hazardous entities has become a challenge due to the increased number of these sophisticated cyber-attacks. Large-scale processing and manufacturing of chemicals are few of the typical attributes of an industrial process plant specifically a chemical plant. Such type of a plant is provided with a set of raw materials as an input, which performs certain reactions to give us the desired chemical and with some other residual output. Unique equipments and technologies are used for the manufacturing process in these plants and industries. Along with the integrity, availability and information confidentiality enough attention is given to the safety and operational reliability. Having a vast infrastructure is a predicament to security breach and that’s why physical security is as much crucial as cyber security. Assume that a system is hacked by an intruder, causing some critical parameters like temperature, pressure and raw material ratio to be changed. This could prove to be calamitous.