2009 Control Systems Cyber Security Conference

Joe Weiss and Applied Control Solutions are announcing that the 2009 Control Systems Cyber Security Conference will be held October 19th-22nd in Bethesda, MD. The conference will look at Control system policies, procedures, technologies, and cyber vulnerabilities that affect a wide variety of industries including chemical facilities. As such it will include presentations from multiple industries. While most people think of control system cyber security as protection against intentional attacks, this conference looks at all communications related actions that impact the performance of control systems. According to Joe Weiss this would include “intentional unintended events (eg, viruses and worms), malicious directed attacks (eg, hackers), and unintentional incidents (eg, inappropriate policies and testing)”. According to the tentative agenda, the sessions will include the following that may be of interest to the chemical security community:

+ IT Security/Networking for Control System Engineers + Cyber threats to ICS – Open Discussion + Process control reliability demonstration + AMI hacking demonstration + Current status of education for ICS Security + DCS Upgrade Experience + Review of Control System Vulnerabilities + Review of Selected Control System Cyber Incidents/Failsafe Discussions + Case History of Control System Hacking Incident

Registration information can be found on-line. This is an expensive conference (well outside my travel budget), but it does cover an important topic. I hope some ISCD people will be able to take advantage of the large government discount to attend.