PureLand Wastewater Current State Description Objective This assignment requires

Question

PureLand Wastewater Current State Description

Objective

This assignment requires the student to assess the current state of Cyber Security for PureLand Wastewater. This assessment can be used as part of the project to develop and present a Cyber Security Improvement Plan.

Quality of assessment

Student should strive to ensure the Current State provides a clear and concise description of the security status for PureLand based on the document titled, Site Summary Report PureLand Wastewater.doc on Blackboard in the PureLand Case Study section.

Instructions for assignment

1. Read the PureLand Cyber Security Case Study document to understand the premise of this assignment. In summary, you are a consultant hired by PureLand Wastewater to improve their CyberSecurity due to new CFATS regulations from the US Department of Homeland Security.

2. Write 1-2 pages on your opinion of the current state of security within their company. Highlight the areas where they are strong or weak. Consider using a SWOT analysis if you have learned that technique, but it’s not required.

Explanation / Answer

PureLand Cyber Security , PureLand Wastewater Treatment Inc. (est. 2001) is a company providing years of experience in all aspects of Wastewater Treatment with special emphasis on the Chemical Manufacturing and Biological Fermentation industries. We are a flexible, responsive organization with a network of resources to handle any size project. Each project is approached by utilizing our strong sterilization and engineering skills while drawing on our background in Operations, Service, Validation, and Quality to provide solutions for all of your Wastewater Treatment needs. We provide personal attention to ensure customer satisfaction in all services and equipment we supply.
Security Concerns
PureLand has special security concerns due to the highly toxic nature of some of the chemicals they use to sterilize and treat wastewater streams for their customers. Although Physical Security has always been on their radar and relatively strong, Cyber Security has not been something that they were particularly concerned about. After all, the chemicals they use to do their work were not proprietary so they had little concern about theft of intellectual property or trade secrets being compromised.
All this changed recently when PureLand executives and operations folks were contacted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in regard to a particularly toxic chemical they use to sanitize Wastewater in biologically hazardous processes-Chlorine Dioxide. DHS officials were aware of their use of the chemical because of publicly available waste treatment permits provided to PureLand by the EPA. As it turns out, Chlorine Dioxide is on the DHS Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) list of chemicals of interest because of the risks associated with chemical release or sabotage using this chemical. PureLand was aware Chlorine Dioxide was a very dangerous chemical, but they had never considered Cyber Terrorism or theft of the chemical for sabotage when completing prior risk assessments. The implications of this were quite serious for PureLand, as they now are required by Federal law to comply with both Physical and Cyber Security regulations related to their use of this chemical of interest. DHS officials made PureLand aware of their obligations and informed them that they would be subject to an audit by DHS within eighteen months that would assess their compliance with CFATS regulations. If compliance was not achieved within 12 months of the initial audit, PureLand would be subject to huge fines and penalties that could include closure of their facility.
PureLand Reaction
The PureLand Executives were quite alarmed by the news and immediately formed an internal team to create a Cyber Security improvement and compliance plan. The team researched the issue and reviewed the information provided by DHS around security standards. The first objective was to use a tool provided by DHS to perform a Cyber Security Self Evaluation on their computing systems. The hope was that by using this free tool, they could get some insight on the most critical Cyber Security gaps that existed and potentially provide a road map on where to focus their security improvement plan. A team of system administrators, security professionals, and management representatives worked on the Cyber Security Self Evaluation over a period of two days.
Cyber Security Self Evaluation Results
The results of the Self Evaluation were very disturbing for the entire team. The evaluation reported varying levels of compliance from 0% to 100%, but it was very clear that they had their work cut out for them. The leadership team met with the IT staff and their IT Security Analyst, and it was decided that they didn’t have the internal staffing or appropriate skillset to implement the needed security improvements within one year. The decision was made to hire an outside consultant to help devise and implement a Cyber Security improvement plan that would achieve these critical objectives:
1.   Reduce their risk from Cyber Security incidents to an acceptable level
2.   Achieve compliance with CFATS regulations
3.   Minimize negative impacts to production and safety

Strong Areas:
•   Executives remains alert every time.
•   Their monitoring system is very good.
•   The network of the company is interconnected in such a way that they can communicate effectively between all the lines of business
Weak Areas:
•   PureLand does not have a comprehensive mechanism for cyber security that can ensure that their information, data, and the chemicals are adequately protected.
•   The sabotage of the chemical in question can be very hazardous to the company and the environment
•   The company also does not have appropriate protection for its antivirus; the firewall does not properly filter traffic and no enough network security that can protect the company’s data and information
•   lack of adequate cyber security for the chemical makes their tradesecrets open to cyber security attacks that are prevalent these days

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