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Sandia Technology logo A quarterly research and development magazine.

Winter 2006/2007
Volume 8, No. 4

SANDIA TECHNOLOGY

Keeping oil and gas control systems safe

Sandia has taken the role as the lead national lab in Project LOGIIC. The project, Linking the Oil and Gas Industry to Improve Cyber Security, was created to keep U.S. oil and gas control systems safe and secure, and to help minimize the chance that a cyber attack could severely damage or cripple America’s oil and gas infrastructure.

Brian Richardson and Weston Henry
LOGIIC team members Bryan Richardson and Weston Henry, standing, demonstrate the project’s monitoring solution hosted at Sandia’s Center for Control Systems Security. (Photo by Randy Montoya)
The concern: An attack by viruses, worms or other forms of cyber terrorism on oil and gas industry process control networks and related systems could destabilize energy industry supply capabilities and negatively impact the national economy.

LOGIIC was funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate. The program brought together 14 organizations to identify ways to reduce cyber vulnerabilities in process control and SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems. The goal of the project was to identify new types of security sensors for process control networks.

Sandia worked with project partners to create a simulation test bed and apply this environment to counter potential threats to the oil and gas industry using hypothetical attack scenarios. Sandia researchers created two real-time models of control systems used for refinery and pipeline operations.

Ben Cook, project lead for Sandia, said LOGIIC brought together government, asset owners, vendors, and the research community to protect the critical infrastructure. A key element of LOGIIC’s public-private partnership model was the leadership role it gave to industry partners — in this case the oil and gas asset owners — to define the technical problem and manage the project towards a successful outcome.