Oil and Gas companies collect, work, and depend on a wide range of sensitive data. Depending on the oil and gas sector – upstream, midstream, or downstream – sensitive data can include plant maps, production trends, revenue forecasts, geophysical data, well data, exploratory information, etc.
All these data are shared in a network with different parties for different purposes (decision-making, analytics, studies, etc). In case of a data breach in this network, the consequences range from paralyzing the flow of resources to significant financial losses and potential physical and economic impacts. The oil and gas supply process depends on IT and operational technology (OT) systems – cyberattacks could cause these systems to fail and disrupt critical operations.
Oil assets and infrastructure emerged as the biggest targets for hackers and cyberattacks since 2017, accounting for a third of all incidents over that period. Trend Micro states the average financial damage to the industrial control systems and operational technology (ICS/OT) industry is approximately $2.8 million, with oil and gas impacted the most. In addition, almost three-quarters (72 percent) of respondents admitted they experienced cyber disruption to their ICS/OT environments at least six times during the previous 12 months.
How can this be solved?
What we offer in the Oil & Gas industry is a system based on Blockchain technology, that ensures secure storage and trusted data sharing, giving the confidence the companies to share safely their critical data. An example of how this would work and add value:
Example: Company X during petroleum exploration produces a large amount of data (GIS, seismic, well data, etc). This data now needs to be shared with different parties in the organization for decision-making and analytics, or between the companies who are partnering together. Blockchain can be used as a system to exchange safely this data. The value that Blockchain has is immutability (the ability of the blockchain to remain unchanged, unaltered, and indelible). With these values, the company and partners can safely rely on and trust the data flowing into this system.