Chevron Corporation wants to eliminate any chance of being hacked by cyber criminals. They are currently working on “air-gap critical” systems to stay off of the internet whenever possible to minimize the opportunities for cyber criminals to infiltrate. They’re hoping through this systems won’t be taken down by targeted attacks, such as what happened in the Ukraine Power Plant attack in 2015.
Dr. Byron K. Wallace, Chevron’s cyber security process control network vulnerability assessor spoke at The Automation Conference 2016. He said: “We go to a bit of an extreme. It’s not a one for all model…the core functions are the same, but the application is different industry to industry.” Their answer to not being hacked is ensuring that they securely protect their process control networks by keeping them as far away from the internet as possible.
Chevron also seems to be blaming cyber threats as a possible explanation as to why their first quarter resulted in a $725 million loss in the first quarter of 2016. The company names certain hard facts that have been leading to less than desirable losses in 2016:
- Changing crude oil prices
- The competitiveness of alternate energy sources or product substitutes
- They note that potential cyber threats and terrorist acts could hurt them further, hence the push for air-gap systems that avoid the internet
To further add to their woes an pressures this year, Chevron shareholders have voted to continue the search for new oil fields, despite the global encouragement to stop using fossil fuels. The shareholders rejected climate change stress tests to measure what the continued impact of their business will be on the global climate. Their reasoning was that the climate measurement that occurs in the world today is untrustworthy. Whilst this happens, Chevron will cut 10% of its workforce and spend 25% less of their spending budget, according to the Wall Street Journal.
