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TMK and Sinara Group hold first cross-industry manufacturing related cyber training for employees at the National CyberRang

Rostelecom-Solar and TMK2U Corporate University jointly hosted a major cross-industry corporate training event at the National CyberRange for employees of TMK and Sinara Group. This is Russia’s first cyber training covering all key information security processes, from reviewing information security and building an integrated infrastructure security system to detecting and countering cyberattacks.

The three-day event was part of TMK and Sinara Group’s Horizons international corporate forum and had seven teams of IT and information security specialists of the two companies compete in detecting, countering and investigating cyberattacks. The last day of the event included a review of cyberattack scenarios and the teams’ response tactics. The competition was streamed live via the Mobi2U corporate mobile app and covered by Anton Kokin, Head of Cybersecurity at TMK, and Andrey Kuznetsov, Head of the Laboratory of Cybersecurity of Automated Process Control Systems (APCS) at Rostelecom-Solar.

On the first day of the cyber training, the teams needed to make as complete an inventory as possible of the specifically created infrastructure based on the industrial segment of the cyber range. Their next task was to identify vulnerabilities and configure event logs in the SIEM system; at this stage, the completeness and accuracy of the data from each team was evaluated.

On day two, the teams dealt with targeted cyberattacks, and the key assessment criterion was the speed of incident detection and response. Following every cyberattack, the teams prepared reports describing both the attacker’s sequence of steps and the measures required to prevent such incidents in the future.

On the final day of the cyber training, its outcomes were wrapped up, and the training cyberattack scenarios and the teams’ responses were reviewed in detail. The team of TMK’s management company showed the best results in countering cyberattacks, followed by the team of Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant and Chelyabinsk Pipe Plant (PNTZ and Chelpipe), and the team of Seversky Pipe Plant (STZ).

“A cyber training is a great opportunity to objectively evaluate one’s competencies and practice hands-on skills in responding to information security incidents, and the competition format made it even more exciting. Importantly, the scenarios covered were close to real world and relevant specifically to industrial enterprises. This is the first time such format is used in the steel industry. The training confirmed the strong capabilities of our cybersecurity team,” said Dmitry Yakob, TMK’s IT Director.

“The importance of industrial plant safety is still underemphasized. The complexity of this domain stems from the need for very specific capabilities, whether in internal information security departments or service providers, the specific operational processes of technology segments and, at the same time, the understanding that the risks of a successful cyberattack are totally unacceptable. So we are very pleased that TMK and Sinara Group are working so hard on enterprise cyber resilience, using as many tools as possible to test and improve it,” said Igor Lyapunov, Rostelecom’s Vice President for Information Security.

The National CyberRange was set up pursuant to the instruction of the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media as part of the Digital Economy program. Its purpose is to practice the procedures related to cyberattack detection and response at the level of industries and key organizations in Russia. To date, Rostelecom has used the resources of its subsidiary Rostelecom-Solar to build the first three segments of the cyber range, which are digital copies of typical IT infrastructures existing in organizations across key economy sectors.