ISA-TR62443-2-3, D1E11, November 28, 2012– 14 – ISA99, WG06, TG02
4 The Situation [Informative]
4.1 Patching Problems Faced by IACS
WORKING GROUP NOTES: Section in progress.
There are many challenges that asset owner‘s face when attempting to implement a patch
management program for their IACS. Patching an IACS means changing the IACS, and changes
can negatively affect its operability or reliability if not performed correctly. Preparing an IACS to
be patched can require a tremendous amount of work and asset owners may struggle for the
necessary resources to address the added work load. For each patch and for each product they
own, an asset owner will have to gather and analyze patch information for each device they own,
install and verify on a test system, ensure backups are created before and after, ensure testing
again before turning the system back over to operations, and finally tracking all the necessary
documentation of the changes.
Due to the resources and efforts required to patch an IACS most organizations schedule patch
roll outs during other normal routine maintenance outages. Sometimes these outage windows are
quarterly, yearly or even longer. Some extremely critical systems may have no allowed outage
windows available, and can therefore not be patched.
Applying patches is a risk management issue. If the cost of shutdown to apply patches is greater
than the risk evaluated cost, then the patch may be delayed, especially if there are other security
controls in place that mitigate the risk (such as no internet access from the system).
The unintended consequences of a poor patch management program can include:
Interference with software license information
Incompatibility between patches and control system software
Virus and anti-malware false positives
Degradation of system performance, reliability, and operability with insufficient testing.
WORKING GROUP NOTES: I would keep the concepts that you have covered, but I would continue to describe the
challenges faced by the Asset Owner. For example, many control systems in use today were engineered with a 20-30
year lifespan before replacement. In the last 15 years, the technology platform has moved towards open systems such
as TCP-IP, Ethernet, and Windows; bringing with it a huge list of vulnerabilities. There are control systems installed in
the last 10 years, now obsolete in Microsoft terms. But, are extremely vulnerable and the Asset Owner has no plans to
replace them any time soon. Or, the product supplier has chosen to stop testing patches, or the product supplier has
obsoleted the platform/product as well. That is the intent behind the timeline illustration, to help visualize this problem
and all the different scenarios.
Compounding this problem are downtime and operational impacts required to install patches, because total outages
may be required to update the software. Even if an Asset Owner wanted to patch, they cannot afford to shutdown to do
it. This is partly a byproduct of how control systems components have been designed, in that nobody expected security
vulnerabilities to be found, or a need to update the software code. There are a lot of Asset Owners who are nervous of
the idea patching their standby node, and crossing their fingers that when the system is failed over it will work
correctly.
I also refer you to Eric Byres presentation at DigitalBond‟s S4-2012 conference called “Why Johnny Can‟t Patch”.
There are additional concepts in there which could fit into section 4.2.2.
Ultimately, the objective of this section is to describe why IACS patching is tough, and different from IT
patching. The reader should be fully aware of all the gotchas, issues, and challenges they are going to face by
proceeding with an IACS Patch Management program.
WORKING GROUP NOTES: < A difficult concept to explain, perhaps it is not important for us to put in our document.
But in short the problem faced by IACS is they are often never patched since installation date, the vendor stopped
support several years ago, the platform/OS they run on is end-of-line, and there likely known vulnerabilities that cannot
be patched for these reasons.
If we are successful in explaining this problem, we can state this document helps provide guidance where patching is
possible, and that other ISA resources, or DHS, or NIPC should be considered for establishing protective
countermeasures for the unpatchable system, until the legacy IACS is retired/replaced.
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