Leidos
Overview: Energy specialist and former CIA Director James Woolsey famously proclaimed that Americans aren’t addicted to oil, “but their cars are.” This pithy assessment underscores the modern world’s dependence on oil and illustrates why the industry’s security is critical to the security of every nation. From military aggression to cyber threats, the oil and gas sector is a high-profile target for adversaries intent on disrupting production, intercepting sensitive data, and crippling national and global economies.
Past attacks against this industry have proved the value of risk management and riskbased security policies for stakeholders. As a critical infrastructure, the oil and gas industry faces additional risks beyond those in many organizations. In addition to the intellectual property that any company must protect in its corporate Risk Management Framework, threats to the oil and gas infrastructure also put at risk the physical wellbeing of people and the environment as well as the national security. Losing intellectual property through a security breach can damage a company’s revenue stream, but the damage caused by a major industry disaster such as the Deepwater Horizon spill, or the blow-out of the Ixtoc I exploratory well in the Bay of Campeche on June 3, 1979, which resulted in the release of about 475,000 metric tons of oil to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, endangers lives, local environments and even global economies.
Exacerbating the challenges of securing its infrastructure, the industry faces the dangers of dealing with a combustible element in extreme conditions and often in remote locations. In addition to the difficulties of operating in harsh environments, complex socio-political events make the process of finding, transporting, refining and distributing oil and natural gas a high-risk endeavor.
