26-02-2018

Pavlodar oil chemistry refinery selects Kaspersky industrial cyberSecurity

According to the Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT report, 46 per cent of the industrial automation systems in Kazakhstan were attacked in Q1 of 2017. In order to reduce the chances of getting straight onto a list of targets, Pavlodar Oil Chemistry Refinery’s IT department has initiated a project of improving its industrial cyber-safety processes and technology measures. The implementation of Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity, alongside employee training, became a key step in the refinery’s systematic approach to providing reliable protection from cyberthreats.

Pavlodar Oil Chemistry Refinery (POCR LLP) is among Kazakhstan’s largest oil refining and production companies. It is a strategic enterprise for the country, and uses advanced equipment and automation technologies for industrial processes. Facing challenging targets to increase petroleum product processing, Pavlodar Oil Chemistry Refinery significantly increased its degree of automation for industrial processes, and therefore faced increased requirements for information security in its Automated Process Control System. After considering different options for protecting production without interrupting the process itself, POCR has selected Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity as its cybersecurity platform of choice.

To ensure the efficiency of cyberthreat protection, POCR decided to boost its employees’ awareness of cybersecurity (the most critical part of any business’s security). Dedicated industrial security training for the company’s personnel was conducted, to provide reliable protection for all components of the industrial environment - from workplaces to servers and programmable logic controllers (PLCs). All these measures and technologies now help to maintain the continuity and stability of technological processes, along with reliable protection against cyberthreats.

”Kaspersky Lab’s task was to ensure the cybersecurity of industrial computers and the SCADA servers, as well as provide a tool to control the core parameters of the industrial processes. The solution also needed to have no impact on industrial processes, requiring no changes to the SCADA configuration. This was accomplished in full by Kaspersky Lab.” – says Semyon Tikhonenko, Chief Information Security specialist at POCR.

“Kaspersky Lab’s solution for industrial businesses is a portfolio of technologies and services designed to secure all layers and elements of organization – including SCADA servers, HMI panels, engineering workstations, PLCs, network connections and even engineers – without impacting on operational continuity and consistency of the technological process. We are glad that Pavlodar Oil Chemistry Refinery chose an integrated approach to the protection of critical infrastructure. This  allows for the detection of cyberattacks, operational errors by employees, and anomalies in industrial networks.” -  comments Andrey Suvorov, Head of Critical Infrastructure Protection Business Development, Kaspersky Lab.