Saison Information Systems and Owl Cyber Defense Solutions Collaborate to Protect Industrial Control Systems against Cyber-Attacks

 

The two companies have partnered to enable fast and reliable data transfer from mission critical industrial control systems while protecting them from cyber-attacks. Their combined offering achieves this at a much lower cost and can be implemented much quicker than traditional solutions.

 

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are typically used in critical infrastructure facilities such as power plants, transportation systems, and industrial application domain. Until recently, ICS were mostly confined to closed environments. However, as we enter the IoT era, it has become increasingly necessary to connect the management systems for ICS to external networks and even to the Internet for operational efficiency and business reasons.

 

In many jurisdictions around the world, there are regulations and standards for security measures to protect ICS from cyber-attacks (1). One measure is to use a data diode to provide network segmentation when connecting an ICS to external networks.

 

Since Owl DualDiode Technology® only allows one-way communication, if a destination host fails to receive data, the source host cannot receive notifications of the failure. To date, the only solutions to this problem have been to enable bidirectional operation using multiple DualDiode devices.

 

This problem can be solved by implementing a combination of HULFT managed file transfer middleware with OWL’s all-in-one bilateral communication technology.

 

HULFT is a managed file transfer (MFT) middleware known for fast, reliable and secure data transfer via its proprietary protocol. In the event of a data transfer failure, it can automatically recover, enabling transfer even over unreliable networks.

 

OWL bilateral data diode technology boasts security comparable to physical blocking.　It is a DualDiode solution developed by OWL used worldwide in the defense, power, oil, finance, and government sectors. Unauthorized intrusion is blocked by only allowing the data reception confirmation signal to be passed back to the source host.

 

The strength of DualDiode solution is in the use of hardware. Unlike software firewalls, data diodes do not require constant updates of signatures and are not susceptible to zero-day threats.