Johnson Controls Participates in Hack the Building Cybersecurity Event

Johnson Controls, a global leader for smart and sustainable buildings, and the architect of OpenBlue connected solutions, participated in the Hack the Building event that took place November 17 – 19, 2020 in Annapolis, Maryland. The Hack the Building event was created in partnership with the Maryland Innovation & Security Institute (MISI) and DreamPort to demonstrate the importance of protecting the building automation control systems and operational technologies used to operate critical infrastructure. The event put a spotlight on safety and security risks, and served as a showcase for the types of cyber skills and capabilities needed to improve cybersecurity.

The Hack the Building event brought together more than 50 teams from government and industry, from federal laboratories and academic institutions to building technology companies and cybersecurity providers – to exercise cyber skills and solutions across a range of attack and defend scenarios for a connected building.

Hack the Building was designed to address four key goals:

• Provide a realistic environment for teams conducting offensive and defensive cyber operations against real-life IT, control, and manufacturing target systems without fear of violating laws or risking property damage.
• Discover scenarios proven to allow someone to exploit target systems causing real-world physical events which, without intervention, would result in disruption, loss of physical assets, exfiltration of controlled unclassified information, and damage or destruction.
• Modeling and simulation of risks affecting existing U.S. Defense Industrial Base.
• Deliver realistic evaluations of defensive cyber solutions designed to protect control systems, IT, OT, IoT and manufacturing technology.

Johnson Controls field operations and product cybersecurity teams provided equipment, on-site support and expert domain knowledge. The event allowed us to observe cyber tactics and techniques used by top cyber professionals in a controlled setting, contemplate future cybersecurity features, and hone our product security incident response process. Johnson Controls is a strong advocate for cybersecurity and our commitment to engage, learn and innovate are highlighted in our sponsorship and active participation in the Hack the Building event.

Johnson Controls Cyber Solutions provides peace of mind to our customers with a holistic approach managing cybersecurity and privacy risk across the technology lifecycle for a diverse set of deployment environments.

To learn more, visit our website at www.johnsoncontrols.com/cyber-solutions contact us at productsecurity@jci.com.