From Paper and Concrete to Smart Everything: The Importance of Cyber Defense

The internet and I were both born in the same decade. I know, I feel old! Because of that fact, my life and the life of our infrastructure have seemingly progressed on a similar path. In the early years, everything was physical and disconnected. I did my homework with paper and pencil and with help from my local library.  Our infrastructure was built with concrete, street signs, and disconnected traffic signals. I couldn’t leverage the internet to find all my answers and cars couldn’t talk to, well everything. If you wanted to steal my identity or hack our transportation system, you had to physically steal my wallet or physically damage roadside equipment. Not anymore. Today, everything is connected and accessible. That connectivity comes with new risks that didn’t exist before. And just like in my own life where I need to ensure my information is secure, so do our transportation networks. That’s where cybersecurity comes in.

Cybersecurity Triangle

I am by no means a cybersecurity expert, but I work with some very smart people, and they have taught me a lot since joining Rekor. I was recently reflecting on all that I have learned about cybersecurity and was trying to think of a way to explain it to others. The idea of a cybersecurity triangle kept coming to mind. In fact, to me, I see it as an equilateral triangle with a physical side, digital side, and people side.

The Physical Side

Our infrastructure may be connected, but it is still physical. In fact, with edge computing so critical to collecting roadway intelligence, we must not forget about edge computing’s unique security challenges, such as scalability concerns, increased attack surface, and complex monitoring challenges. Cybersecurity should be deployed for intrusion detection and prevention systems to monitor network traffic for suspicious activity, along with other strategic security measures and management practices.

The Digital Side

As our infrastructure becomes more connected, we must employ an array of cybersecurity capabilities during development, in real-time, and for on-going maintenance. During development, secure coding practices should be implemented to mitigate the risk of vulnerabilities. In real-time, advanced threat detection and response capabilities should be deployed to defend against a wide array of cyber threats, including phishing, man-in-the-middle attacks, data manipulation, DDoS attacks, malware, industrial control system attacks, password attacks, drive-by attacks, and ransomware. To maintain the systems security, regular cyber risk assessments should be conducted to identify vulnerabilities and threats, updates should be made to software and systems to deploy the latest security patches and fixes, and strong encryption methods should be utilized to protect sensitive data.

The People Side

People are still at the heart of our infrastructure, and they are also at the heart of great cybersecurity. Industry partners and regulatory bodies – such as Surface Transportation ISAC (ST-ISAC) – should be engaged to continuously improve security practices and share information, best practices, and collaborate on enhancing security. Additionally, cultivating a culture of cybersecurity awareness across an agency by providing regular training on the latest threats and best practices for prevention and response in addition to creating a core team of experts to oversee security protocols and incident response plans is best practice to manage cyber risk.

Conclusion

Each side of this cybersecurity triangle is just as important as the others to build a strong cyber defense system. Rekor stands at the forefront of cybersecurity, advocating for proactive strategies such as those I outlined here that harness cutting-edge technologies to fortify critical infrastructure against dynamic cyber risks.