We must get out of cybersecurity hole, says miner’s security chief

Anglo American’s security model “is not as strong as it should be”, the miner’s chief information and security officer has warned.
A successful cyberattack could threaten the lives of Anglo American’s 50,000 mineworkers, Malcolm Norman said, as the FTSE 100 group’s operations become increasingly digital.
Speaking at BT’s cybersecurity event at Adastral Park, the telecom’s company’s research and development headquarters near Ipswich, Norman who joined the company last year, said Anglo American needs to go further to join up its physical and cybersecurity approaches.
“That ability to fuse the grand, strategic, physical threats to our organisation and the logical threats and then make appropriate decisions is not as strong as it should be. That is an area of improvement that we need to drive,” he asserted.
Norman said the increasing automation of the company’s mining systems leaves frontline workers vulnerable to the impact of hacks, such as from losing control of the lifts or driverless vehicles.
A cyberattack against its operational technology could result in “preventing an individual from going home to their family,” he said.
“The most important things are: do we know who is down the mine? The loss of access control. Do we know that the health and safety systems are up and running? Do we know if we can get people from the bottom of the mine out? Do we know whether autonomous vehicles with wheels the size of this roof are under our control or not?” Norman said.
Speaking on a panel with Norman, Bas Burger, chief executive of BT Business, added: “I think the attackers very often don’t realise that the influence they can have, that the lift not going up or down any more in a mine can cause serious harm. If they get control of trucks as big as this building, it’s maybe a click of a mouse, but the impact is humongous for you guys.”
On Thursday, BT revealed that it spotted 2,000 potential cyberattacks each second as hackers are increasingly using artificial intelligence, with malicious scans of online networks and devices up by more than 1,200 per cent in the last year.