The importance of Cyber Security in the oil and gas sector: What you need to know

Our energy sector faces daily threats from malicious cyber attackers. According to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2024, the UK is the most attacked country in Europe, and energy is the fourth most-attacked industry.

At the end of last year, the UK was still 75% dependent on fossil fuels, making the oil and gas (O&G) sector a particularly attractive target for both financially motivated and state-sponsored attackers.

Crucially, operators within the energy sector must comply with the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Regulations, which means that they have a legal requirement to ensure high cyber security standards. As a result, it’s vital that companies and organisations understand their responsibilities to meet these regulations.

Device management (H2)

The current data collection and analysis landscape can be accessed and used across various devices, such as mobile phones, tablets, and traditional desktop computers — especially given the on-premises nature of many O&G companies.  

As the O&G sector embraces digitisation and the rollout of software solutions as part of its core data management architecture, it is important that companies ensure that critical data is only accessed on authorised devices by authorised users and that there is a central record of all company-certified devices accessing data and information to ensure that this cannot be maliciously or unintentionally exposed or spread.

The emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud (H2)

 With data less and less likely to be residual in physical servers and memory locations, there is an inherent risk with moving to more nebulous data storage concepts and implementations that have critical third-party dependencies. This sort of challenge extends out to automated data capture and distribution through IoT sensors and central systems, which remove and mitigate the need for manual data capture and the use of individuals to capture such data. Although this is a massive efficiency gain, it introduces potential risks in terms of unwilling data exposure and cyber security concerns.

O&G companies must implement suitable security protocols and standards to ensure migration to such a structure or the ongoing upkeep if this has already happened. It may be worth consulting a professional services agency for this purpose. The upkeep of an estate across both legacy and modern environments can introduce further complexity to creating such policies.

Incident response training (H2)

Crucially, companies and organisations in (O&G) should accept that at one point or another, an incident could happen and data breaches and leaks could occur – leading to a substantial amount of damage to the underpinning software architecture the company has in place. Therefore, it is key that the administrators and software developers involved in the backend infrastructure of an organisation have suitable Disaster Recovery systems in place and any required processes to address the situation and implement a failsafe as and when needed. Such processes must be highly dynamic and reactive to incidents, and in doing so, the aforementioned proactive steps can be suitably enforced with a reactive response that eliminates the impact of losing data.

Research and development (H2)

Given the many threats, many companies within the O&G sector would benefit from focusing some of their research and development (R&D) efforts on boosting their resilience to cyber attacks.

R&D projects that focus on developing better ways of integrating IT and OT, creating more secure remote access, enhancing IoT and cloud data security, or aiding with incident response and Disaster Recovery may all also be eligible for relief. If a business isn’t sure if their R&D work qualifies, R&D Tax Credits specialists Leyton UK, can help to advise on what projects are eligible.

Becoming cyber-prepared to defend against a common threat (H2)

The commitment to enhancing cyber security is substantial, requiring considerable planning, effort, and an ongoing investment of resources. The risks, however, are huge. A successful cyber security attack could be devastating to a company’s brand reputation, finances, and even potentially its ability to operate.

The UK Government describes cyber security breaches and attacks as a “common threat”, with half of businesses reporting some form of attack in the last 12 months. Now is the time to invest in becoming cyber-prepared. By following the steps above, you can ensure that your business is ready for when an, unfortunately likely, attack comes.

Read the latest issue of the OGV Energy magazine HERE