There needs to be a law that all nuclear and nuclear-adjacent facilities have no connection to the Internet. The fact it's allowed is unbelievable.
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> OT cybersecurity specialists interviewed by CSO say that KCNSC’s production systems are likely air-gapped or otherwise isolated from corporate IT networks, significantly reducing the risk of direct crossover. Nevertheless, they caution against assuming such isolation guarantees safety.
This was also not a nuclear facility, however. The article says it makes "non-nuclear components".
In my experience auditing critical infrastructure, most facilities are "air gapped". I put that in quotes because while you can't browse the Internet from the control network(s), there are ways to exfiltrate data. The managers, engineers, regulators, and vendors need to know what is going on in real-time. Back in the day this could've been a serial port connecting two systems for a one-way feed. Now I imagine it's something far more sophisticated and probably more susceptible to abuse.
As an example, you might have a collection of turbines manufactured by GE and GE needs to have real-time data coming from them for safety monitoring and maintenance. The turbines might have one connection for control traffic and another for monitoring. How to secure these vendor connections was always a debate.
Btw, there are strong cybersecurity regulations around critical infrastructure. CIP-005-07 covers security perimeters. You can view them here: https://www.nerc.com/pa/Stand/Reliability%20Standards%20Comp...
The only world where "likely" is a reasonable word is in reference to possible physical taps or a precise enumeration of physical access points that went unaudited, but have reliably followed safe access control/configuration procedures. Anything else is plain incompetence.
It's an answer from talking heads, not from people from the facility.