Reader Comment – Siemens Security

Dale Peterson, a long time reader and an even longer time cybersecurity blogger, left a response to this morning’s post about video surveillance cyber security reminding me that it isn’t right to paint with too broad a brush. He noted that Siemens is a very large organization and the problems of one part of the company don’t necessarily reflect the operations of the whole. He is certainly correct.

I had hoped that my comment that ‘I know nothing about the video surveillance services by Siemens’ would have made clear that I have no factual basis for actually judging the security standards for that division of the company. Of course I clouded the issue in the next sentence, but I was trying to make the point that Siemens has shot itself in the foot with their PLC security responses.

So, let me make the point explicitly clear. While it is unfair to judge the entirety of a large, multi-national corporation by the actions of a single division, that is exactly what most people unconsciously do. Corporate management needs to take that into consideration when a part of their organization so obviously tries to cover up their mistakes.

If the entire corporation; from light bulbs, to video surveillance, to the good-folks living in Siemensstadt; does not want to have their reputation tarnished by the marketing folks selling PLCs, they need to get that house in order, post haste. It may not be fair, but that is life.