Not too long ago, I received an email from noted cybersecurity guru Eric Byres who told me he was back in the industry after a brief hiatus as an advisor to Verve Industrial. The company didn’t register with me, and I went on to other things.

This week I received a message from an old PR contact who just picked up a new client–you guessed it, Verve Industrial. I agreed to an introductory call to find out more. I didn’t expect to be talking to anyone I knew, so the name didn’t register with me. Should have. I found myself talking with Rick Kaun this week. Now VP Solutions with Verve Industrial, turns out I knew him from previous stints with Matrikon and Honeywell.

The company began life as a SCADA and PLC integrator. The owner progressively noticed security situations and evolved a cybersecurity practice. Considering a way to grow, he took in funding and a new CEO (former McKinsey, but evidently not a bad guy–have to note that, I once worked for a couple of ex-McKinsey guys) and a new CTO. And a new VP Solutions.

The company takes a different strategy for its offering from others. Kaun notes the original solution was to white list devices on the network. To improve on that, many companies went to passive detection solutions.

Verve has an agent-based platform that allows for remote changes to the PLC or SCADA only with a trusted person at the console in the plant. It is compliant with OT topologies yet can talk the security talk with CISO types.

Not only for intrusion prevention, clients who use the system are currently getting 10x production.

I’m not a security expert. It’s just that cybersecurity is a crucial element of good IIoT design. So, here are some bullets to whet your appetite if you are looking for an interesting alternative to your current solution.

Verve Security Center

Benefits:

  • Faster & Lower Cost Deployment
  • Faster Time to Remediation
  • More Efficient Analysis, Reporting, and Audit with Integrated UI
  • Improved Approach to OT Business Risk Management
  • Lower Cost Security Management
  • NO Risk to OT Operations
  • Ability to Leverage Prior Tool Investment

Features:

  • Deeper & more comprehensive asset inventory
  • Faster time to remediation with closed loop vulnerability management
  • Better risk rating with view of vulnerabilities, process criticality plus all user accounts, risky software, network connections in a single risk score
  • Lower security management costs with scaled analysis and playbook development with local OT control over remediation – in same platform
  • Better detection with open-platform data ingestion from multiple OT and IT tool sets

Current solutions do not enable limited OT resources the rapid visibility and response to vulnerabilities and threats they need:

  • Traditional IT tools cannot protect IOT/OT embedded devices with proprietary firmware
  • IT vulnerability scanning tools can damage sensitive IOT/OT systems
  • Tools are siloed by function increasing necessary labor and specialized skills
  • Most OT-specific tools are passive detection only and offer limited remediation capabilities
  • Available solutions are expensive to deploy and manage

A fundamentally different approach to IT/OT security management:

  • Deploy across all IT/OT/IOT systems in minutes with no expensive hardware requirements
  • “Closed-loop” solution from assessment to remediation
  • Faster time to discovery and remediation
  • OT-safe agent/agentless solution for real time vulnerability assessment and end point management
  • Lower total cost of ownership
  • No silos: integrate NIST CSF and other compliance requirements in single platform
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