_2: Who Am I?

From controls engineer to ICS Cybersecurity Engineer

ICS CYBERSECURITYCONTROLS ENGINEERING

7/14/20242 min read

So who am I really?

Well, my name is Nar Vang. I am a tech professional whose been in the manufacturing industry since 2012. I started my career as a controls engineer, working for a system integrator primarily doing the works of design, programming and commissioning of control systems for green field processing projects. I've been in the field of controls engineering until early 2023 when I switched my profession to ICS cybersecurity and infrastructure. Now I'm focused on OT infrastructure and cybersecurity.

During my controls engineering days, my duties included designing, programming, commissioning and optimizing control systems. I had extensive experience in batching, Clean In Place and just programming and integrating processing systems with packaging lines for small and large scale projects. I had a few onesies and twosies programming standalone machines and seemlessly integrating with larger progressing/packaging systems. After about 11 years of bit toggling, I had the opportunity to advance my career in the ICS Cybersecurity world.

Prior to my switch, I've done multiple projects in the OT space, more specifically virtualization, networking and many IT-OT related projects. The career switch over to ICS cybersecurity did take additional training. These trainings that I took on was CCNA and IEC-62443 training and certification and at the time of writing this blog I'm currently studying up for my VMware VCP-DCV. Not sure how valuable the VCP-DCV is now due to the VMware acquisition by Broadcom but I'll just go ahead and finish off what I started. In addition to training, I've had on the job training on Firewall configurations and deploying Industrial Demilitarized Zones as per the Purdue Model and IEC-62443 standards. Last but not least, I've also done work in OT domain administration including group policies and access control. In this field of tech, it's always evolving so I do have future plans to advancing forward.

So what else do I see myself doing in the near future?

As for cybersecurity, there are specific areas that I am eager to get my hands dirty in. To be more specific, I want to at least deploy software defined access (SDA) in the OT space. At the time of writing this, this is NEW to the manufacturing or OT space. It's actually pretty new in the IT space as well. Think of software defined access as a zero-trust network with microsegmentation. This is the future of networks. I am planning on putting together a blog on SDA and hopefully a lab as well. I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of some of Cisco's appliances. Hopefully, they see this and provide some sponsorship for my future SDA-OT lab. Cisco has some great documentation and blogs on SDA for the different industry verticals. See this link for more information. This is pretty neat stuff and will require further documentation as best practices are further developed in the OT environments; OT networks will advance into SDA and leaves traditional networks in the dust.

In conclusion, I am just a tech professional learning and failing as I go. Failures are the most valuable lessons in life but we just have to make sure to get back up when we get the wind knocked out of us. As one of my mentors alway say to me, "Have a back up plan and ensure you have a back up plan to your back up plan."