Email Security for the Energy Industry
Protect critical infrastructure from targeted cyberattacks Energy providers including nuclear, oil, gas, solar, and wind are prime targets for ransomware, phishing, and nation-state threats. Trustifi’s AI-powered email security platform defends against evolving risks with advanced protection tailored to the energy sector.
Trustifi seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365 to block phishing, malware, and zero-day threats before they reach your users.
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Email security insights for the energy sector
See how utilities, energy providers, and critical infrastructure teams can safeguard operational data, protect partners, and keep essential services secure through hardened email communication.
The Growing Cyber Threat Landscape in the Energy Sector
The energy market, including the electric and gas industries, faces unique cybersecurity threats while attempting to lower organizational risk. Cyberattacks on energy providers can cause widespread utility outages, significant economic losses, infrastructure damage, and safety risks for workers and the public, leading to substantial repercussions.
Statista predicts the energy market will surpass two trillion U.S. dollars by 2030. Its vast scope across various regions makes them prime for cyber threats, creating many entry points for attackers. The more dependent countries become with current and next-generation energy sources, the higher the risk.
Furthermore, as energy companies increasingly adopt digital transformation and emerging technologies to enhance their operations, they inadvertently broaden their attack surface, making the industry more vulnerable to cyber threats.
Request Pricing TodayEnabling Email Security for Energy Sector Compliance Mandates
Compliance mandates are required in the energy space. Many energy equipment elements, including SCADA devices, legacy operational technology (OT), and industrial control systems (ICS) went untouched for long periods because they were concerned that any patch of updates would cause an extended production outage.
Compliance frameworks and mandates, including NIST, require extensive cyber defensive deployments, processes, and executable protects critical infrastructure from email threats and attacks.
NIST offers a framework, particularly its "Energy Sector Asset Management" guide (SP 1800-23), to help utility companies manage risks associated with their operational technology (OT) assets, such as electricity plants and pipelines. This guide provides best practices for securing mission-critical infrastructure.
These best practices include:
Email encryption, data loss prevention, multifactor authentication, anti-phishing, anti-malware, account takeover protection, inbound filtering powered by AI, and outbound filtering are all essential email security tools for helping utility organizations meet NIST SP 1800-23 and other energy industry mandates.
What is NERC CIP-008-6: Incident Reporting and Response Planning?
NERC's CIP-008 standard reduces reliability risks from Cyber Security Incidents by outlining incident response requirements for domestic and international organizations.
CIP-008-6 significantly enhances security and compliance standards by mandating utilities to create and enforce comprehensive security Incident response plans. These updated plans will outline specific steps for utilities to identify incidents impacting protective devices, reduce damage and losses, address exploited vulnerabilities, and facilitate the restoration of operational capabilities.
Email security solutions powered by AI, like Trustifi, continue to improve their ability to leverage more accurate automated incident response. This security function helps organizations auto-respond to next-generation security events targeting OT, ICS, and IoT control systems through email. By leveraging automated response, Trustifi assists its utility clients in meeting NERC CIP—008-6.
Protecting Energy Supply Chain: A Must
Cybercriminals and foreign adversaries threaten the U.S. utility market. In 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration reported in the news their emphasize on securing important utility platforms through a global initiative, underscoring the need for coordinated supply chain security in operational technology.
Protecting essential infrastructure is far more than a series of ICS devices, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, or robotics. Energy companies must also protect their supply chains, internal controls, and employees from cyberattacks.
Email security solutions play an essential role in protecting important supply chains. Business email compromise (BEC), domain impersonation, and spoofing are common vectors against utility companies. Hackers will attempt to impersonate a supply chain partner and use email phish and spoofing to trick an executive-level person or a mid-level administrator into providing information about an upcoming utility supply project, request an urgent payment of a fraudulent invoice, or access the CEO's calendar.
Trustifi's support of DMARC, DKIM, and SPF for domain authentication is critical in preventing spoofing, impersonation, and financial fraud. By blocking lookalike domains or emails with incorrect headers, Trustifi helps reduce the threat of BEC against utility companies.
Request Pricing TodayPhishing Tactics in the Energy Sector
Email phishing against the energy market, similar to other markets, continues to be the top vector.
Energy companies witness several methods of phish attempts that challenge their security functions and managed services partners. Adversarial AI powers these security events, and hackers use various phishing techniques.
Leveraging Integrated Email Security Layers to Solve Energy Cyber Threats
Energy companies dealing with email phishing and other cybersecurity attacks must approach this challenge by leveraging a strategy with an integrated platform, not a series of standalone devices. Fully integrated email protection layers must be centralized, managed, powered by AI and ML, and have a unified cost model.
Email security protection controls need to be implemented to help protect the user from email phishing attacks and comply with various mandates.
Inbound email filtering powered by AI
The Value of Security Awareness training to Meet NERC CIP-004-7 mandates
To meet NERC CIP-004-7 mandates, energy companies must implement quarterly and annual security awareness training for employees, contractors, and business partners. Energy firms will leverage security awareness training modules embedded within the email security architecture, including those offered by Trustifi.
Trustifi's ability to leverage AI to help select email attack education based on actual events. This method helps educate the user community using realistic digital assault vectors.
Request Pricing TodayEmail Security Supporting the Future of Energy Technology and Cybersecurity
The future of email security focusing on the energy sectors will be protecting next-generation robotics, sharing data within the cloud, supply chains becoming more integrated, and dependency on robotic process automation (RPA). While these transformation technologies will help optimize the energy market, these new technology capabilities also create larger digital assault surfaces.
A recent Deloitte report reveals that 83% of energy and utility companies use or plan to use cloud services within two years, motivated by agility, flexibility, reduced CapEx, and improved operational efficiency.
Email security is essential in preventing hackers from accessing instances in the cloud and remote locations. The merging of IT, IoT, and OT environments led to additional security concerns, including more ransomware attacking control equipment running industrial 4.0 robotic factories, global supply chains, and automated system controls.
Request Pricing TodayWhy Trustifi?
Domestic and global energy firms share many everyday realities, including becoming more targeted by hackers, hacktivists, and nation-state actors. Advanced Email Security, powered by AI and ML, is essential in preventing next-generation attacks from taking control of OT, ICS, and IoT devices in the energy marketplace.
Want to see how Trustifi can help protect your energy infrastructure?
Schedule a demo with our engineering and support teams to explore how AI-powered email security stops next-gen threats from targeting OT, ICS, and IoT systems.
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