When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.

Adversaries have a range of objectives, from stealing classified data and conducting corporate espionage to disrupting economic stability.

In the last few years, multiple high-profile incidents have been linked to known threat groups.

Cybersecurity

Sandworm, closely linked to Russias military intelligence, is another long-running APT targeting critical infrastructure.

Sandworm also unleashed the notorious NotPetya ransomware.

Iran has also proven itself to be a major player in international cyberattacks.

The CyberAv3ngers group has attacked U.S. water facilities using compromised PLCs and HMIs.

The group has also targeted civilian infrastructure with IOCONTROL, aLinux-based backdoor designed for multiple standard OT control systems.

OT assets are seldom compatible with scanning andIT management toolsdesigned for standard IT networks.

Security teams are often stuck pursuing slow and inefficientpatch managementprograms that lack clear direction.

More dangerous vulnerabilities may be overlooked while less important issues drain resources.

The result is a drastically reduced and more focused to-do list for security teams.

For example, our research found roughly 111,000 devices with KEVS.

But filtering the list by vulnerabilities linked toransomwareand devices with insecure connectivity immediately reduces the total number to 3,800.

This is especially important for asset-intensive companies with a large volume of devices to manage.

The aim is to reduce the number of assets that need continuous security inspection.

Prioritization

The high-risk inventory can now be prioritized based on severity.

Exploit prediction scoring and business impact assessments provide more data points to inform these decisions.

This avoids wasting resources on patching vulnerabilities that look severe on paper but are low risk in reality.

Mobilization

With all that preparation done, its time to get moving.

We feature the best internet monitoring tool.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc.