INTRODUCTION EVOLUTION OF OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY IN THE AGE OF DIGITALISATION Operational Technology has had a long evolutionary history. The control of industrial processes used to be managed by a complicated series of hard-wired relays, timers and sequencers, coupled with manual processes. OT systems arose out of a need to automate and digitalise these manual processes in order to enhance productivity and meet rising market demands for goods and services. OT systems were designed to have a long life span, with a focus on reliability and safety, rather than security. These systems ran on proprietary control 6 OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CYBERSECURITY MASTERPLAN 2019 protocols using specialised hardware and software, and were often isolated from business networks and the Internet. This allowed OT systems to be “secure by obscurity”, as they were typically not connected to and air-gapped from other systems. The possibility of a cyber-incident on OT systems was deemed to be remote due to the belief that their systems were completely isolated and air-gapped. In addition, OT systems were traditionally looked after by the engineering departments of companies, with little or no security considerations in mind. Rapid digitalisation has caused industrial processes to shift from systems based on proprietary computing and communications, to those based on open standard Information Technology (IT) computing platforms. This has led to the convergence of IT and OT, and created an industrial revolution of systems interconnectivity. networks. OT systems are no longer air-gapped like before, and the cyber risk profiles of these systems have increased significantly. We need to ensure that cybersecurity measures to safeguard our OT systems evolve with the rise in cyber risks. The next section details the OT cyber threat landscape and how it affects Singapore. Today, the extensive linkages among enterprise IT and OT networks, businesses, operators, vendors, and other third party systems have greatly increased the operational footprint of OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CYBERSECURITY MASTERPLAN 2019 7