THE MINING INDUSTRY IT ’ S IT SECURITY RISKS
CAT ’ s Minestar System shows how integrated systems are becoming
and all the controls they have ... and the background checking they do on people that work in the accounts area and the call centre and so forth , and then you say to them , ‘ There ’ s nothing on here with your SCADA system . Where ’ s your engineering side of it ?’ ‘ Oh that ’ s not IT . That ’ s the engineers . That ’ s not a problem , because they ’ re not interconnected ’,” Rothery told the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit in Sydney ,
“ When you go to see the chief engineer , he ’ ll say , well they used to not be interconnected , but when they took out all the analogue systems and they needed to put it
on an IP-based system , we weren ’ t going to put in a separate IP-based network . We just dumped it onto the corporate network . The CIO doesn ’ t even know it ’ s there ’,” Rothery said .
The use of automated equipment has placed companies at the mercy of unscrupulous cyber hackers looking for their next big cache of private information . Criminals understand the increasing dependence mining companies have on technology , and are actively looking for ways to threaten the denial of access to data , processes and equipment .
Although cyber criminals have yet to figure out a way to make
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