Bio
Ben Miller is Vice President of Professional Services and R&D at the industrial cyber security company Dragos, Inc. where he leads a team of analysts in performing active defense inside of ICS/SCADA networks. In this capacity he is responsible for a range of services including threat hunting, incident response, penetration testing and assessments for industrial community as well as advanced research and innovation within ICS security.
Previous to his role at Dragos, Inc. Ben was the Associate Director, Electricity Information Sharing & Analysis Center (Electricity ISAC) and led cyber analysis for the sector. He and his team focused on leading edge cyber activities as they relate to the North American bulk electric system. Ben was recognized as instrumental in building new capabilities surrounding information sharing and analytics in his five years at the E-ISAC. Prior to joining the E-ISAC, Ben built and led a team of 9 focused on Network Security Monitoring, forensics, and incident response at a Fortune 150 energy firm. His team received numerous accolades from industry and law enforcement. During this time he also served in a CIP implementation project and various enterprise-wide mitigation programs. Ben has served in various roles including both planner and player roles in GridEx I, II, and III. He served as a facilitator of several NERC Task Forces including the Cyber Attack Task Force, and is an acknowledged contributor to NIST SP 800-150. Ben is an accomplished speaker in various venues including Black Hat, SANS, ICSJWG, ShmooCon and others. He was recognized by SANS as a 2017 Difference Maker Award Winner for his contributions to the electricity sector.
Modernization of operational infrastructure and online activation of more IP devices is rapidly expanding the attack surface and increasing the complexity of managing OT systems. As malicious threats now pose a much greater risk to operational uptime/availability and IP-enabled OT systems expose business-critical IP data, leaders are under pressure to ensure OT systems are protected.
This is exacerbated by the fact that OT security seriously lags behind IT security. It is no wonder that 89% of firms with OT systems experienced a breach in those systems (and over half in the past year). The threat of malicious intrusions and attacks can have a much greater dramatic impact on operational availability and safety, with only a few downtime minutes adding up to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in lost productivity and revenue, heightening safety concerns, and detrimentally impacting brand reputation.
Upgrading OT security is not easy, as planned downtime is required for testing, installation, and maintenance. But with increasing pace and sophistication of the threat landscape, traditional security approaches will not work. Industries in purview: manufacturing, oil & gas, transportation, and energy/utilities.
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