Mining craft – the building blocks of cyber security for the mining industry

The mining industry holds high importance to the Australian economy, it generated approximately $455 billion in export revenue in the 2023-2024 fiscal year. Mining is one of the most impactful critical infrastructure industries whose operation effects other critical infrastructure sectors like manufacturing, energy and construction.

Mining is one of the oldest crafts in human civilisation. It involves the extraction of valuable minerals and other geological materials from the Earth. The 20th century brought significant improvements in mining technology, enabling a shift from a manual labour-intensive industry to a mechanical one. Most recently, there has been another dramatic advancement in mining, with the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, internet of things (IoT), and robotics.

The benefits of using the advanced technology in mining includes enhancement of mining precision, predictive maintenance to avoid equipment failures, and most importantly, increase safety in the work environment. AI algorithms can accurately predict locations of mineral deposits, maximising yield and minimising waste.

Digital transformation has increased the industry’s reliance on automation and connectivity for its IT and OT systems including the IoT sensors, resulting in higher level of vulnerability and exposure to cyberattacks. With system interconnectivity, malign actors are well-positioned to infiltrate and attack weaker, third-party connections. In 2024, 25% of major global cyberattacks were made against the mining sector, and some of those attacks specifically targeted Australian mining companies. The threat groups involved were BianLian, GTFire, Greatness, Webvoice and A7xsurabya.

The key threats to mining sectors are: operational disruption, data theft, ransomware attacks, and supply chain vulnerabilities. The risk of IT and OT systems not being configured and monitored correctly increases the threat of operational disruption. Data theft can result in financial setbacks and leak of highly sensitive geological survey data could threaten an organisation’s future commercial viability. In addition, a breach to employees’ personal information - identity theft – could result on a loss of employees’ confidence and reputational risk. Digitised operations attract threat actors to deploy ransomware to hold sensitive data as ransom. A successful attack to a single weak link in the system could impact the entire supply chain with widespread consequences to interconnected industries.

The craft of combating such complex cyber threat challenges requires prioritising cybersecurity investments and implementation of appropriate risk management; resilient cybersecurity policies that includes employee training and awareness; application of defence-in-depth; robust access control; incident response; use of active cyber defence services; and compliance with industry standards.