Cybersecurity: Keeping Up With AI and ML – Pirate Press

USB drives are used by ransomware attackers to distribute malware across the air gap that all industrial distribution, manufacturing, and utility firms rely on as their first line of defense against cyber attacks. According to Honeywell's Industrial Cybersecurity USB Threat Report 2021, 79 percent of USB assaults have the potential to damage operational technologies (OT) that power industrial processing plants. The incidence of malware-based USB attacks is one of the most rapidly developing and difficult-to-detect threat vectors that process industries such as public utilities confront today, according to the research. As the Colonial Pipeline and JBS Foods demonstrate, this type of attack vector is particularly effective. Utility companies are also being targeted by ransomware criminals, as the thwarted water treatment plant attacks in Florida and Northern California illustrate.