The Hidden Security Risks of Treating Laboratory Environments Like Data Centers: A Growing Concern for IT and Lab Professionals
The Hidden Dangers of Applying IT Security Frameworks to Laboratory Environments
In the pursuit of streamlined operations, many organizations extend their IT security frameworks into laboratory environments without modification. However, this approach can have unintended consequences, compromising the integrity of scientific research and creating safety risks that cannot be mitigated by traditional backup and recovery methods.
False Equivalencies and Hidden Risks
Kellen highlights several false equivalencies that can put laboratory environments at risk. These include equating availability with uptime, assuming that patchability is similar to IT maintenance windows, and believing that user intent is the same in both IT and OT environments. In reality, scientists may bypass controls to protect experimental integrity, and OT updates are limited by validation cycles, regulatory requirements, and recalibration processes.
The Limitations of Traditional IT Impact Models
When a laboratory is compromised, traditional IT impact models fail to capture the true consequences. In science-led environments, impact must be measured in terms of outcome-centric consequences, including invalidated research, false positives or negatives, regulatory exposure, loss of ownership or provenance, and physical safety risks. Incident response plans that rely solely on restoring from backups are fundamentally incomplete for laboratories.
A Risk-Based Approach to Security
To address these challenges, Kellen advocates for a risk-based approach to security that prioritizes business impact over generic compliance. This involves establishing a formal, auditable Information Security Management System (ISMS) that selects, prioritizes, and maintains security controls based on their impact on scientific outcomes and safety.
Effective Visibility and Compensating Controls
In practice, “good enough” visibility in OT environments means understanding which systems communicate, why they do so, and how changes may influence scientific outcomes or safety. Effective visibility enables teams to detect unexpected behavior quickly and make informed decisions about which experiments are at risk.
Compensating controls are essential in constrained OT environments, but they can become liabilities if not managed properly. Risks emerge when controls are forgotten, manual steps rely on a single expert, or network segmentation blocks essential diagnostics. A compensating control becomes a liability when it cannot be validated without disrupting operations or impedes modernization.
Partnering with Scientists
Treating scientists as stakeholders rather than users is critical to shaping positive security outcomes. When scientists feel that security is imposed rather than co-created, workarounds become inevitable, and risk moves underground. By partnering with scientists, security teams can develop controls that align with the realities of scientific workflows and protect epistemic integrity.
Conclusion
Ultimately, successful laboratory security requires a deep understanding of the scientific method and the constraints of OT environments. By adopting a risk-based approach and prioritizing stakeholder partnership, organizations can protect the integrity of their research and ensure a safe working environment.
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