The transportation sector happens to move people, goods, as well as services across different parts of the economy and, at the same time, generally keeps things ticking. Just like the human circulatory system, its role often happens to be taken for granted until there is a problem with it. And a growingly common cause of transportation system issues happens to be cyberattacks.
It is worth noting that when the cyberattacks go on to disrupt transportation, they can very well have cascading impacts on certain other sectors, such as healthcare, retail, and even food supplies, thereby resulting in slowdowns as well as a disorder in wider economic as well as societal functions. Let us take a look at the key transportation cybersecurity threats that one needs to watch out for and also highlight four pillars for better cyber defense within the sector.
Major Cyber Threats in Transportation
One of the 2023 surveys found that 55% of transport leaders were at least kind of worried about cyber risks. Here is the lowdown on some major cyber threats when it comes to transportation.
Ransomware
The scourge when it comes to ransomware often goes on to cause major hassles for transport operators. Transportation systems, because of their reliance on real-time data as well as operations, happen to be especially vulnerable to such system or file-encrypting attacks. Whether it happens to be public transit, airports, shipping companies, or even logistics networks, such systems are indeed lucrative targets when it comes to threat actors that want to maximize profits or chaos.
A successful ransomware attack can go on to affect ticketing, scheduling, as well as operational systems, which may as well lead to significant service disruptions. As recently as early this year, precisely in January 2024, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority- KCATA went on to suffer a ransomware attack that majorly impacted communication systems, thereby preventing customers from reaching the KCATA call centers.
OT Compromises
Operational technology- OT when it comes to transport is all the hardware as well as the software systems that track as well as control physical processes, vehicles, and infrastructure. Whether it happens to be a traffic control system or a railway signaling system, OT happens to lie at the heart of its functioning. One of the major cybersecurity concerns when it comes to transport is that threat actors manage to go ahead and compromise these systems and even potentially endanger safety or life.
One of the reasons that OT compromises happen to be such a threat is that numerous OT systems within the transportation sector got developed as well as deployed when cybersecurity threats did not happen to be a prominent concern. These systems were designed in terms of operational efficiency as well as reliability, with less emphasis when it came to security.
One might even think, why not replace such older as well as less secure systems? But, transportation infrastructures happen to be complex, widespread, and inherently interconnected. Legacy OT systems are kind of deeply embedded in this infrastructure, thereby making replacing or even upgrading them awkward as well as costly.
Notably, the modern digital transformation strategies, that go on to bring IT and OT closer to convergence, add to the risk all the more. It is well to be noted that when the Colonial Pipeline shut down in 2021 after a cyberattack, the decision happened to be a direct result of security teams worried that IT compromise would go ahead and also spread to the pipeline’s operational technology systems.
Breaches in the data
The transportation sector happens to be a rich source of sensitive data, such as personal information of passengers like names, addresses, along with payment information, travel histories, and also critical operational data that ranges from logistics details, cargo contents, and proprietary technology information. This makes the data breaches a prominent transportation cybersecurity barrier in a landscape in which profit-hungry hackers often value the exfiltration of sensitive data as the basic goal of their attacks.
While the ransomware gangs often go on to steal data before locking down the systems, ransomware is not just that one cause of data breaches. Hackers make use of other methods, such as info-stealing malware or even compromising user accounts, so as to get their hands on the prize. In 2024, news went on to emerge that an unauthorized party went on to gain access to a medical transportation organization’s archived data, which went on to result in a breach that happened to impact 900,000 patients.
Vulnerabilities when it comes to IoT
Using the Internet of Things- IoT sensors along with smart devices goes on to bring many benefits to transport services. Right from more efficient as well as predictable maintenance to a better customer experience, there is indeed a lot of upside.
However, one downside from a cyber perspective is that the IoT devices raise the attack surface. Each connected device goes on to potentially offer a new entry point for cyberattackers to compromise. And that potential for compromise is high because IoT devices often happen to have inconsistent security standards or even easily exploitable vulnerabilities. Some of the devices even lack traits such as the ability to be patched or updated.
Pillars when it comes to strengthening transportation cybersecurity
While considering how to best make the cyber defenses in transport more robust, there happens to be a lot to cover, but these four pillars go on to offer a good foundation.
1. Defense in depth: Make use of a layered approach to security that goes on to offer defense in depth, and do not rely on a single security tool or measure in order to protect the most significant systems and assets.
2. Secure the network design: Divide the networks into distinct zones in order to reduce the risks of widespread breaches. Choose reference secure network architectures that can help limit the risk of IT compromises that cross over into OT systems. Securing the network design limits the attacker’s ability to make a move laterally all across the network and access critical systems and data.
3. Rigorous vulnerability identification: Continuously identifying as well as addressing vulnerabilities is indeed crucial in an industry that happens to be so reliant on legacy systems as well as IoT devices. Regular vulnerability assessments, along with penetration testing, help find weak points within the networks and systems before the threat actors reach them. A rigorous approach happens to slash the low-hanging fruit vulnerabilities that numerous hackers look for.
4. Continuous tracking: Implementing real-time monitoring as well as detection systems helps transport companies swiftly detect and respond to cyber threats. Continuous tracking of network traffic, system logs, and user activities can go on to detect anomalies indicative of a cyberattack. When the internal resources happen to be lacking for this 24/7 monitoring, managed detection as well as a response to it is indeed a good alternative.
