Homework Help: Questions and Answers: Your company implements an industrial control system (ICS) that will connect to two networks: the company network and the control system network. The ICS should transmit only invoicing and billing information on the company network, while the control system network should handle all ICS-related communication. When constructing such a system, which of the following design concepts would best protect the business and its operations?
A) Use a standard layered approach to secure the ICS.
B) Include a firewall between the company network and the ICS.
C) Implement secure booting.
D) Air-gap the two networks.
Answer:
First, let’s understand the scenario: Building an industrial control system (ICS) that will be connected to two networks:
- Company network: for transmitting invoicing and billing information.
- Control system network: for handling ICS-related communication.
Given Options: Step by Step Answering
a) Use a standard layered approach to secure the ICS.
- A layered security approach (defense in depth) involves implementing multiple levels of defense, such as firewalls, antivirus, monitoring, etc.
- While effective in general, this approach alone may not prevent direct communication between the company and ICS networks, which could expose critical control systems.
- A layered approach is good practice, but it doesn’t specifically address the separation of invoicing/billing and ICS traffic. Not the best option.
b) Include a firewall between the company network and the ICS.
- A firewall could control traffic between the two networks by filtering what goes in and out, potentially blocking harmful traffic or unauthorized access.
- While this is a solid security measure, a firewall may still allow some level of communication between the networks, and the risk of misconfiguration or exploitation remains.
- Adding a firewall is useful, but it still allows some level of communication, so this is not the most secure option.
c) Implement secure booting.
- Secure booting ensures that the ICS hardware/software loads only trusted, authenticated code, protecting it from malware or unauthorized changes during startup.
- This is a valuable security measure for protecting the ICS from internal threats or tampering, but it doesn’t address the problem of keeping the networks separate or preventing cross-network communication.
- Secure booting is helpful for securing the ICS, but it doesn’t solve the issue of network separation.
d) Air-gap the two networks.
- Air-gapping means physically separating the two networks so they have no direct communication. The company network and control system network would be isolated from each other.
- This is the most secure option because it completely prevents any direct connection between the two networks, ensuring that ICS communications cannot be accessed from the company network and vice versa.
- Air-gapping provides the highest level of security, as it eliminates the risk of data leakage or cyberattacks from the company network affecting the ICS.
Final Answer:
Based on the above analysis, the correct answer is:
d) Air-gap the two networks.
This design concept would best protect the business and its operations by ensuring complete separation between the company network and the control system network, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access or data leakage between the two.
Learn More: Homework Help
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