A robust cybersecurity program is increasingly necessary to protect an organization’s critical processes and functions from cyber-attacks.  Within the radiation processing industry, digital systems and networks are relied upon to support physical protection systems (PPS) and operational technologies that secure and control Cobalt-60 sources used by this industry.  Vulnerabilities within these systems might aid an adversary in illicit removal of the radioactive sources.  The adversary could use a cyberattack to exfiltrate sensitive information to aid planning of the attack, compromise PPS to degrade or bypass security, and manipulate control systems to place and hold the radioactive source in an optimal location or state to aid illicit source removal.

To better understand these potential cybersecurity risks at radiation processing facilities, the United States’ Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration’s (DOE/NNSA) Office of Radiological Security (ORS) and Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) partnered with the International Irradiation Association (iia) and Italian radiation processing operator, Gammatom Srl on a cybersecurity project to enhance the cybersecurity of Gammatom’s PPS protecting high-activity radioactive sources.

This new project focuses on the design and implementation of a new PPS with greater resilience to cyber-attacks.  This novel approach ensures that cybersecurity protection measures are cohesively integrated into the new PPS.

This presentation will discuss plans for this unique collaborative project to improve Gammatom’s physical and cybersecurity posture to not only better protect Gammatom’s radioactive sources, but their critical operational and business systems that enable them to sustain important services for their customers.