Hack the Plant

Idaho National Labs and the Next Generation of Critical Infrastructure Security

Episode Summary

“So many times, with the amount of software that is in critical systems and critical IT systems, vulnerabilities will be discovered in various software that might be used in multiple locations. But you may not understand that you have that software in your environment, or you may not have the context to know whether or not it is actually vulnerable because of the new vulnerabilities that have been reported.” -Zach Tudor Zach Tudor of Idaho National Laboratory (INL) joins this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t. INL is a Department of Energy National Laboratory, and is the nation's leading center for nuclear energy research and development. In this episode, we discuss ways INL collaborates with other agencies and the private sector to keep our supply chain and critical infrastructure systems secure. How does the government, through INL and other agencies, work with the private sector to understand and test risks to our infrastructure?

Episode Notes

For today’s episode, I’m joined by Zach Tudor, the Associate Laboratory Director at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). INL is a Department of Energy national laboratory, is the nation's leading center for nuclear energy research and development. Zach is responsible for INL’s Nuclear Nonproliferation, Critical Infrastructure Protection and Defense Systems missions.

We discuss how INL partners with the private sector to test challenges to critical infrastructure, and the cutting edge work INL is doing to secure the next generation of critical infrastructure.

"Honeywell has been one of the big players that has been working with us for quite a while. And Hitashi. Schneider Electric.  They will provide us some of their systems that are critical in energy critical infrastructure, industrial control systems, and we will tear it down in a methodological process that we have developed here…[to] start building an understanding of where the risks are and the supply chain of our critical energy infrastructure." - Zach Tudor

Other topics we cover: What work is INL doing to secure the next generation of critical infrastructure?  How can we make our critical infrastructure systems more resilient?  How is data security managed with emerging technologies such as 5G, or self-driving cars? What strategies should the government and private industry use to categorize risk and mitigate it in a way that actually has measurable impact?  

 Join us to learn more.