PLAINS ALL AMERICAN PIPELINE
“ We looked at operational technology ( OT ). IT business systems are more likely to get attacked , but you can have a much greater magnitude and severity of an attack on an operational technology system . These form the backbone of industrial control systems , handling uptime , reliability , safety , compliance . This would result in much larger economic or physical disruption and impact environmental health and safety .”
With OT cyber , there are many overlaps to Al ’ s focus on non-technology elements . “ With all energy companies , you ’ ve got many different factors in trying to apply modern technology , cyber or otherwise , in the field like remote areas , user adoption issues and historical ways of doing the work . These projects are very complicated and difficult to pull off . And if you don ' t deal with a lot of those foundational elements , so that you have organisational readiness to take this on , to optimise the work process , and lead people through the change , it ' s very difficult to succeed . This is a transformational change for those groups .”
According to Lindseth , technology is there to help to enhance things , but it doesn ' t make up for poor processes or team or individual ineffectiveness . A combination of bringing legacy habits and practices together with more modern behaviours is necessary when trying to use data to improve decision-making .
“ You must empower those people and give them more authority . It ' s much bigger than just technology ,” he said .
“ I ' m also on the board of the Oil and Natural Gas Information Sharing and Analysis Centre ( ONG-ISAC ). Every critical infrastructure sector has one of these ISACs and they are really important entities . We could be doing a lot more with them . The idea is that if a member company gets hit , they provide the threat intel to the other member companies .”
Risk assessment in action Lindseth has always approached IT using the tools of a business risk manager . “ It ’ s just what I know .” For example , he was in charge of a major trucking project , where he and the project manager sat down and figured out the 15 to 20 things that they could do to improve the odds of success of the project . Then , Lindseth suggested they quantify how much they could improve , helping them to prioritise .
264 February 2022