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Cybersecurity is critical for an increasingly digitalised Australian mining industry.

In recent years, the digital transformation has revolutionised the way mining companies operate.

Delivering a multitude of benefits, including reduced costs and improved operational performance, introducing digital solutions is a no-brainer.

However, an aspect of digitisation that isn’t widely discussed in the Australian mining industry is cybersecurity. This is something Brennan is working to change.

Drawing on extensive experience in the mining sector and boasting over 27 years of IT expertise, Brennan has evolved into one of Australia’s leading and independently owned systems integrators.

With cybersecurity woven across their business and within their solutions, Brennan understands that improved technology availability has created more opportunities for threat actors to interfere with mining operations.

“With mining companies increasingly using technology to manage their operations, they’re effectively becoming technology companies,” Peter Soulsby, Brennan’s head of security, told Australian Mining.

“The challenge with that is more technology means more opportunities for disruption.

“Disruptions can take many forms. They can be the unintentional kind, created by users, employees or contractors. Or they can be intentional, created by threat actors such as hackers.

“The modernisation of mining has inadvertently created more risks, which is why cybersecurity is just as important in mining as it is in any other industry.”

Utilising cybersecurity technology can help users understand risks, such as what could go wrong and how those events could occur and unfold. In turn, this can inform the strategies needed to protect businesses against unwanted outcomes.

“Cybersecurity incidents can erode trust, potentially affecting revenue and opportunities to generate new business,” Soulsby said. “On the flipside, cybersecurity is an investment that will protect your operations, revenue and profit, as well as establish your brand as trusted and safe.”

Brennan proactively identifies and assesses the risks identified as important to its mining customers, using these as a starting point to find the best solutions for their needs.

“We map business priorities and risks with IT and cybersecurity priorities and risks. It’s crucial that we understand what’s important to a business, and don’t just deliver a solution for the sake of it,” Soulsby said.

“When you understand what those risks are and what they mean, we can implement controls to mitigate those risks.”

As an ISO 27001 certified partner, Brennan’s outsourced IT services are underpinned by a comprehensive cybersecurity framework that follows the Essential Eight mitigation strategies.

These include patch applications, patch operating systems, multi-factor authentication, restricting administrative privileges, application control, restricting Microsoft Office macros, user application hardening, and regular backups.

“We’ve developed cybersecurity reference architecture to ensure best-practice cybersecurity practices are in place within Brennan and across our client base,” Soulsby said.

“We use this architecture to help our clients efficiently deliver cybersecurity, helping them both understand the importance of cyber protection and protecting their company from pressing cyber threats.”

Like many sectors, the mining industry is facing cyber challenges related to identity, with corporate email addresses and passwords susceptible to being compromised.

In large part, this is due to different authentication systems requiring various forms of identity, often resulting in the creation of several identity systems that then makes identity management more difficult.

“What Brennan does is successfully implement solutions that enable better identity management. It means that commonly recurring actions, such as onboarding a new starter, keeping track of a contract’s lifecycle, or offboarding an employee at the end of their employment, is made simpler and more secure,” Soulsby said.

“We view security solutions through three lenses: what the security market is telling us and what emerging technologies are out there; securing managed services; and client feedback and demand for new capabilities.”

Through its team of certified experts, Brennan removes the complexity around cybersecurity technology by evolving the links between cybersecurity and IT, as well as operational technology (OT).

“By managing identities across IT and OT and breaking the boundaries that previously existed between the two, we’re proving cybersecurity can be done across the entire mine value chain,” Soulsby said.

This feature appeared in the  August 2024 issue of Australian Mining.