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Secure Remote Access Vendors Identified Best Practices in Cybersecurity Topic: Secure Remote Access Vendors Identified: 30 Academic Institute: George Mason University Sponsored by: Protect Our Power Date of Report: August 2020 1 Best Practices in Cybersecurity for Utilities: Secure Remote Access Kai Zeng and Zhihao Li Wireless Innovation and Cybersecurity Lab Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030 Emails: {kzeng2, zli34}@gmu.edu August 2020 This study is sponsored by Protect Our Power (https://protectourpower.org/). 2 Abstract Nowadays, remote Internet access to assets is a common practice and performed daily across all organizations that operate critical infrastructures, such as energy and power utilities. Parallel to the general Information Technology (IT) environments, remote access is prevalent in Operational Technology (OT) environments as well to operate more critical Industrial Control Systems (ICS), like Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Distributed Control System (DCS) with embedded Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and Remote Telemetry Unit (RTU). This remote Internet access to an OT environment could lead to detrimental consequences if abused. Recognizing the utmost importance of securing remote Internet access for power utilities, this report aims to identify best-practice secure remote access solutions and products on the market. First, we provide a literature review in Part I about the functions and services of remote access control and privileged access control, as well as the identified attacks that could hazard the control system of the power grid. We also introduce the standards, regulations, and guidelines released by the government and industry on secure remote access. Second, in Part II, we conduct a thorough search on the vendors providing secure remote access products or solutions and summarize a vendor list with 30 companies that offer such security services. Third, based on the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) standard, we identify the key functionalities a secure remote access product should provide and design criteria to assess these functionalities. Finally, in Part IV, we present a comparative matrix of secure remote access products provided by 14 vendors according to the designed criteria. Best practice recommendations for secure remote access solutions are then provided based on the evaluation results. 3 Table of Contents Abstract 3 List of Acronyms 5 Part I: Secure Remote Access Control in Electric Grid: Literature Review 6 1. Introduction 6 2. Remote Access Control and Privileged Access Control 7 2.1. Remote Access Control (RAC) 7 2.2. Privileged Access Control (PAC) 9 3. Secure Privileged Access Control 11 3.1. Related standards and guidelines 12 3.2. NERC guidance and required features 12 Part II: Vendors of Secure Remote Access Solutions 14 Part III: Criteria for Secure Remote Access 20 1. Key Functionalities for Secure Remote Access 20 1.1 User identification 20 1.2 Secure communication 20 1.3 Access management (access policy granularity) 20 1.4 Monitoring, logging, and alerting 21 1.5 Accountability with full audit 21 2. Evaluation Criteria 22 3. Criteria Design and Scoring Rules 23 3.1 Criteria design 23 3.2 Weight assignment 24 3.3 Criteria scoring rules 25 Part IV: Vendor Comparison and Best Practice Recommendation 27 1. Comparative Matrix 27 2. Evaluation Results Discussion 29 3. Best Practice Recommendation 29 References 31 4 List of Acronyms AES Advanced Encryption Standard BYOD Bring-your-own-device CIP Critical Infrastructure Protection CPNI Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure DCS Distributed Control System DNP3 Distributed Network Protocol 3 IAM Identity and Access Management ICS Industrial Control System ID Identity IED Intelligent Electronic Device HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure IP Internet Protocol IT Information Technology LAN Local Area Network MFA Multi-factor authentication NERC North American Electric Reliability Corporation NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology NISTIR NIST Interagency/Internal Report NISTSP NIST Special Publication PAC Privileged Access Control PAM Privileged Access Management PC Personal Computer PLC Programmable Logic Controller PSM Privilege Session Manager OT Operation Technology OSVDB Open-Source Vulnerability Database RAC Remote Access Control RAP Remote Access Platform RDP Remote Desktop Protocol RTU Remote Telemetry Unit RSA Rivest–Shamir–Adleman SCADA Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition SDN Software Defined Networking SRA Secure Remote Access SMS Short Message Service SSH Secure Shell SSL Secure Sockets Layer TLS Transport Layer Security VNC Virtual Network Computing VPN Virtual Private Network 5 Part I: Secure Remote Access Control in Electric Grid: Literature Review 1. Introduction Industrial Control Systems (ICS) play a vital role in critical infrastructures, such as the power grid. The requirements for their high availability and proper functioning demand that the systems should be protected from both intentional and unintentional incidents. In the past, risks to these systems were mitigated by ensuring complete separation of operational domains from information domains and external networks. Access to the control function in the operational domain was limited to authorized users with physical access to a facility. Today, business demands, like increasing online access to real-time data or electric infrastructures, have led to the rapid adoption of modern Internet technologies in critical infrastructures (e.g., power grid), which accelerates the interconnectivity of these once isolated industrial systems. The Internet connectivity has empowered asset owners to maximize business operations and reduce costs associated with equipment monitoring, upgrading, and troubleshooting while creating a new security paradigm for protecting control systems from cyber incidents. Part of the security equation in critical infrastructures involves how operational assets are accessed and managed and how the cybersecurity of control systems is impacted with such access. Remote access to assets is a common practice and is performed daily across all organizations that operate critical infrastructures, such as energy and power utilities, Oil and Gas, etc. Parallel to the general Information Technology (IT) environment, remote access is prevalent in Operational Technology (OT) environments to operate more critical Industrial Control Systems (ICS), like Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Distributed Control System (DCS) with embedded Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and Remote Telemetry Unit (RTU). Remote access to an OT environment could lead to detrimental consequences if abused. Besides the general remote access, privileged access is another essential paradigm. Privileged accounts have administrative permission to view or alter sensitive information and system settings, even shared by multiple users to remotely access the systems. In many cases, they have default or weak passwords with no structured policies to manage and enforce who has access rights, and when and how they should be replaced. Thus, it becomes more severe and critical when third parties and vendors enter the network with privileged access. Recent findings highlight the vulnerabilities of privileged remote access leading organizations to review their remote access systems and implement measures to mitigate the risks. One critical threat is that cyber-attacks could utilize privileged accounts to access the OT domain. The Open- Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) shows that through the end of 2014, more than 85% of all ICS vulnerabilities have been disclosed since 2011 - the year following the discovery of Stuxnet [1]. On December 23, 2015, the cyber-attack on the Ukrainian Power Grid caused approximately 6 225,000 customers to lose power across various areas. The attacker illegally entered into the company’s computer and gained access to each level of the SCADA systems [2]. In September 2017, security firm Symantec warned that a series of recent attacks not only compromised energy companies in the US and Europe but also resulted in the intruders gaining hands-on access to power grid controls---enough to induce blackouts [3, 4]. In July 2018, it was reported that Russian hackers infiltrated the control rooms of multiple electric utilities over the past years, gaining the ability to cause blackout and grid disruption [5]. Besides, cybersecurity researchers at Tel Aviv University and the Technion Institute of Technology have discovered critical vulnerabilities in the Siemens S7 Simatic PLC, one of the world's most secure PLCs that are used to run industrial processes [6]. The above cybersecurity incidents demonstrate the importance of securing the remote access process for utilities and critical infrastructures. In these incidents, either security requirements of remote access are not well understood by the organizations or the security policies are not fully implemented [7,8]. Furthermore, secure remote access solutions designed for IT systems may not adequately consider the control systems environments [9,10,11]. Therefore, a thorough survey and analysis of the best practice solutions for secure remote access are needed. 2. Remote Access Control and Privileged Access Control Secure remote access is becoming more essential in managing and maintaining critical infrastructure with the increasing demands on real-time assets monitoring, upgrading, and troubleshooting in power
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