N-days — or known vulnerabilities — are a goldmine for attackers of industrial control systems. It’s time for a new defense strategy.
Zero-day attacks tend to steal the spotlight when it comes to cybersecurity threats, but it is actually the known vulnerability — the “N-day” — that poses a much larger problem for many organizations and particularly those in the industrial sectors.
Whereas zero-days are a class of vulnerability that is unknown to a software developer or hardware manufacturer, an N-day is a flaw that is already publicly known but may or may not have a security patch available. There are countless known vulnerabilities in existence today, and many large commercial and governmental entities will find they have significant exposure within their broad network footprints.