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U.S. Tops in LNG Movement: Cyber Threats Could Bring It Down

Aug. 29, 2023
These bad actors already have been successful attacking U.S. energy infrastructure. This scenario is crucial for not only the American natural gas and LNG pipeline industries, but all of energy power generation, transmission, and distribution.

The merging of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has created a revival in the oil and gas production and midstream sectors not seen in decades.

The gas is flowing, folks. The U.S. has risen to the top in world production averaging sometimes more than 100 billion cubic feet per day. This historical high point in gas reserves has also made American liquified natural gas (LNG) financially and logistically attractive for export to nations without domestic supplies.

And so the natural gas and LNG pipeline sectors are moving record amounts of production and also facing tremendous threat on both the cyber and physical levels. Cyber criminals, often funded by hostile states, are aiming to make their fortunes off of ransomware and by creating strategic chaos in the U.S. energy throughput activities on a daily basis. These bad actors already have been successful attacking U.S. energy infrastructure and could be getting closer to even bigger destruction and digital hostage taking.

This scenario is crucial for not only the American natural gas and LNG pipeline industries, but all of energy power generation, transmission, and distribution into the marketplace. To that end, the Oil and Gas Journal and cybersecurity protection firm Dragos Inc. are offering a webinar at 2 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Sept. 19. OGJ is one of the longtime energy publications within Endeavor Business Media, along with EnergyTech, Microgrid Knowledge, Utility Analytics Institute, T&D World, and Offshore.

"Oil and Gas Pipeline Cybersecurity Compliance: Understanding TSA’s 2023 Security Directive" will feature Dragos experts Mike Hoffman and Elan Alvey as they discuss changes from the latest Transportation Security Administration Security Directive Pipeline 2021-02D. Hoffman, Technical Lead at Dragos, and Senior Industrial Consultant Alvey will highlight the changes effective now and how they require responses from industry operators and owners in the natural gas and LNG pipeline sectors.

Energy cybersecurity professionals across sectors might find common interest in the directives such as new direct language on critical system designations, required annual tabletop exercises for Cybersecurity Incident Response plans, and more.

The directives also detail requirements for assessing and auditing Cybersecurity Assessment Plans and building an ICS security compliance program. The Dragos-hosted webinar will also detail four critical threat scenarios that industry cybersecurity experts should be prepared for, including trusted vendor compromise, shared IT/OT dependencies, pipedream, and ransomware.

This Oil and Gas Journal-Endeavor Business Media Webinar, “Oil and Gas Pipeline Cybersecurity Compliance: Understanding TSA’s 2023 Security Directive,” is free and will be temporarily available on demand after the live airing.

Join us for the OGJ webinar 2 p.m. ET Tuesday, Sept. 19.

About the Author

Rod Walton

Rod Walton is the EnergyTech Senior Editor.

Senior Editor [email protected]

Phone: 4123767454

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