by Gary Mintchell | Nov 1, 2018 | Security
I asked PAS founder and CEO Eddie Habibi about his pivot to cybersecurity during our conversation this week. It’s not a pivot, he corrected me. Cybersecurity is a natural progression from all the work PAS has done since its founding.
(Read to the end to learn about further security threats.)
Fighting Cyber intrusions begins with data
“Cybersecurity starts with knowing everything in the system from level 0 forward. This creates a baseline for change management. (PAS product) Integrity had that already, so we built analytics, visualization, and reporting on top of it,” he added.
Everybody on OT side looking for diversified information, security is fundamental, know what you have, know your vulnerabilities, address them. Golden baseline, so you can manage change
Supply chain (reason PR firm reached out), If you have a six sigma process but if your suppliers don’t then you don’t have the full value. Cyber is the same way. If I know everything I need to do but if DCS vendor sends patch with malware, then I’m in trouble anyway.
PAS is seeing customers in sectors they’ve never worked in before. While once PAS was focused on working with one supplier, now it works with more than 80 different systems and brands.
I asked about corporate awareness and concern. Habibi said pressure is coming from boards of directors who are concerned about risk and liability. “I haven’t seen anything this serious for a long time. It’s as serious as safety was in the ‘90s.”
USB as a Threat
This was almost a #DUH moment when I saw the press release from Honeywell. USB media devices pose a significant and intentional cybersecurity threat to industrial control networks.
Raise your hand if you already knew that. However, Honeywell used a remote monitoring technology to document the threat.
Data derived from Honeywell technology called Secure Media Exchange used to scan and control USB devices at 50 customer locations showed that nearly half (44 percent) detected and blocked at least one file with a security issue. It also revealed that 26 percent of the detected threats were capable of significant disruption by causing operators to lose visibility or control of their operations.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 13, 2018 | News, Organizations, Security
Claroty has been busy. Following the news of investments and partnership with Rockwell Automation, Claroty and Siemens announced a global partnership. Siemens will leverage Claroty’s advanced behavioral analysis technology in Siemens’ recently announced Industrial Anomaly Detection solution.
Siemens, through its global venture firm Next47, also invested in Claroty, joining a global syndicate of industrial giants that invested $60 million in the company’s Series B round, bringing the company’s total investment to date to $93 million.
Siemens initiated the Charter of Trust in February 2018, gaining the support of other giant companies in the global fight against the rising cybersecurity threat to industrial systems. Siemens also continues to expand its cybersecurity portfolio, debuting at the 2018 Hannover Messe industrial automation conference a new Industrial Anomaly Detection solution, which will deliver significant value for both operations and cybersecurity teams. Operations teams receive a detailed inventory of industrial assets and changes to the network. Cybersecurity teams can continuously monitor these critical networks for vulnerabilities, malicious activity, and high-risk changes, across distributed industrial sites.
Claroty was selected by Siemens following an intensive technical evaluation. “In selecting our security partner for Industrial Anomaly Detection, we reviewed the market, conducted a detailed evaluation, and rigorously tested possible technology in our industrial lab environment,” said Dr. Thomas Moser, CEO of the Siemens Customer Services business unit. “Claroty’s advanced behavioral analysis provides a significant advantage to our customers in reducing risk to their OT environment.”
“Our mission is to help our customers secure industrial networks so they can avoid costly operations downtime, and maintain the safety of people and expensive assets,” said Amir Zilberstein, Claroty Co-founder and CEO. “Siemens’ selection of Claroty as a strategic partner and their investment in our company is further validation of our technology, our team, and our ability to deliver world-class, enterprise-level protection.”
Siemens uses Claroty in a pre-packaged offering enabling customers to quickly and safely deploy anomaly detection in their operations. Siemens brings the offering to the market based on pre-installed packages on Siemens IPC. In the future, it is planned to also offer this based on Siemens switches with an Application Processing engine provided by the Ruggedcom RX1500 series.
Siemens, as owner and operator of nearly 300 factories, heavily leverages digitalizing for efficiency gains. Responsible digitalization must go hand in hand with cybersecurity. Therefore, Siemens is implementing a defense-in-depth security concept in its factories. Industrial Anomaly Detection is an important element of this concept.
The Claroty Platform is comprised of multiple integrated products, built on Claroty’s advanced CoreX technology. The products provide the full range of cybersecurity protection, control, detection, and response. Claroty has received multiple industry awards in recent months. It was recently named an Energy Innovation Pioneer at CERAWeek 2018, and the company’s flagship Continuous Threat Detection product won the ICS Detection Challenge during the S4x18 conference in Miami.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 12, 2018 | News, Organizations
This story is all about partnerships and collaboration. I started to write it yesterday morning, but then I saw a tweet, no not from the “big guy” but from PTC about the Rockwell Automation investment. I wanted to talk about the current trend of partnering.
It begins Roy Kok and DreamReports. We’ve chatted a little about how a company with a somewhat narrowly defined product and market can grow. He’s out in San Diego this week at the Rockwell Automation TechEd event. Rockwell is an important partner. All that data from IoT and analytics isn’t worth the storage if the information can’t be parsed and displayed. Enter Dream Reports. Kok assures me that there will be more partnerships in the future. It’s no doubt his best potential.
Another Rockwell Investment
Meanwhile, I had the opportunity to speak with Patrick McBride the CMO of Claroty about another Rockwell Automation investment. Once again a somewhat narrowly defined market—cyber security—using partnerships to grow. In this case, Claroty attracted $60M of Series B investment, bringing its total funding to $93 Million. He told me that the investment funds will be used to make the appropriate hires to expand sales and projects globally and to support its new partners.
The round was led by Temasek and included Rockwell Automation, Aster Capital (born out of Schneider Electric Ventures), Next47 (Siemens-backed global venture firm), Envision Ventures, and Tekfen Ventures. Original Claroty investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Team8, Innovation Endeavors, and ICV all participated in the round.
Founded in 2014 and exiting stealth mode in late 2016, this investment comes on the heels of a breakout year for Claroty capped by a 300% year-over-year growth in bookings and customer base. Claroty now has large-scale customers with production installations across six continents in nine market segments, including electric utilities, oil and gas, chemical, water, manufacturing, food and beverage, mining, and real estate (building management systems, data centers, warehouses).
“Our unparalleled investor syndicate, which includes some of the most important industrial companies in the world, is a ringing endorsement of Claroty’s technology and the progress our team has made,” said Amir Zilberstein, Claroty Co-founder and CEO. “Our mission is to protect the most critical networks on the planet and our comprehensive platform provides our customers with the capabilities they need to accomplish this vitally important task.”
This rapidly expanding cybersecurity market segment is the result of a “perfect storm” that has placed industrial networks running critical global infrastructures in the spotlight. Old and insecure industrial control networks, which used to be “air-gapped,” are now being rapidly connected to networks and exposed to a range of risks. Because of their criticality, these networks are increasingly targeted by advanced nation-state adversaries who are determined to harvest information and gain a persistent presence for potential future attacks. In 2017, industrial networks also became collateral damage in ransomware attacks like WannaCry and NotPetya costing companies billions in losses.
“A perimeter defense to cybersecurity in today’s connected world is not enough. An end-to-end approach, with solutions that provide deep visibility into operational technology and industrial control systems, is critical for the security of heavy processing environments,” said Hervé Coureil, Chief Digital Officer at Schneider Electric. “Leading the digital transformation of energy management and automation, Schneider Electric takes cybersecurity very seriously and the partnership with Claroty complements the cybersecurity layer of our IoT-enabled EcoStruxure architecture.”
“Protecting the critical automation systems our customers operate against cyberattacks remains a top priority for the company,” said Frank Kulaszewicz, SVP, Architecture & Software at Rockwell Automation. “Claroty has been a partner since 2016 and their advanced technology is a key element of our real-time threat detection and monitoring service. Our investment in Claroty is a logical extension of our ongoing strategic partnership.”
Claroty’s comprehensive cybersecurity platform provides extreme visibility into industrial networks and combines secure remote access with continuous monitoring for threats and vulnerabilities – enabling industrial control system operators to protect these important networks. The company will use investment proceeds to grow the Claroty brand globally, extend its sales and customer support footprint, and continue its rapid pace of product innovation.
T.J. Rylander, Partner at Next47, the Siemens-backed global venture firm said, “The recent increase in scale, scope, and frequency of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure has led to an uptick in demand for new solutions from companies around the world. Claroty has the team, technology, and market traction to deliver the kind of lasting impact that we are looking for at Next47.”
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 4, 2018 | Security
Sometimes I wonder–Is it time for the entire Boomer generation to retire and pass the baton to the next generation? Here is another survey, this one on cybersecurity, that reveals executives know about a problem but have few or no plans to solve it soon.
People tell me constantly about surveys such as this one or training opportunities where executives and engineers in Europe pursue knowledge and those in Asia cannot satisfy their demand for standards and knowledge. And in the US? Not so much interest.
Here is a poll by a security company, Indegy, who (maybe not so surprisingly since it sells solutions) uncovered the gap yet again.
The poll found that nearly 60 percent of executives at critical infrastructure operators polled in a recent survey said they lack appropriate controls to protect their environments from security threats. As expected, nearly half of all respondents indicated their organizations plan to increase spending for industrial control system (ICS) security measures in the next 12-24 months.
“We have been tracking the escalation in cyber threat activity specifically targeting critical infrastructures for some time,” says Barak Perelman, CEO of Indegy. “As the recent joint DHS/FBI CERT Technical Alert illustrates, adversaries have compromised facilities across the US to conduct reconnaissance and likely develop “Red Button” capability for future attacks.”
Lack of Visibility and Control Cited
While organizations have made significant investments to secure their IT infrastructures, they have not fully addressed threats to operational technology (OT) environments. The recent Indegy poll of nearly 100 executives from various critical infrastructure organizations underscores the lack of preparedness in key sectors including energy, utilities and manufacturing. Among the key findings:
- 35% of respondents said they have little visibility into the current state of security within their environment, while 23% reported they have no visibility
- 63% claimed that insider threats and misconfigurations are the biggest security risks they currently face
- 57% said they are not confident that their organization, and other infrastructure companies, are in control of OT security
- Meanwhile, 44% of respondents indicated an increase in ICS spending was planned in the next 12 to 24 months, with 29% reporting they were not sure
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 23, 2018 | Process Control, Security
Critical infrastructure control systems have been under cyber attack for years. Need we mention Stuxnet, the attack that brought the issue to the public eye? Pressure has been mounting on controls, automation, and IoT suppliers to protect a nation’s assets.
Siemens and eight partners signed a joint charter for greater cybersecurity at a recent Munich conference.
Highlights include:
- Ten action areas for greater cybersecurity
- Call for dedicated government ministries and chief information security officers
- Independent certification for critical infrastructures and solutions in the Internet of Things
The Charter of Trust calls for binding rules and standards to build trust in cybersecurity and further advance digitalization. In addition to Siemens and the Munich Security Conference (MSC), the companies Airbus, Allianz, Daimler Group, IBM, NXP, SGS and Deutsche Telekom are signing the Charter. The initiative is further welcomed by Canadian foreign minister and G7 representative Chrystia Freeland as well as witnessed by Elżbieta Bieńkowska, the EU Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.
“Confidence that the security of data and networked systems is guaranteed is a key element of the digital transformation,” said Siemens President and CEO Joe Kaeser. “That’s why we have to make the digital world more secure and more trustworthy. It’s high time we acted – not just individually but jointly with strong partners who are leaders in their markets. We hope more partners will join us to further strengthen our initiative.”
The Charter delineates 10 action areas in cybersecurity where governments and businesses must both become active. It calls for responsibility for cybersecurity to be assumed at the highest levels of government and business, with the introduction of a dedicated ministry in governments and a chief information security officer at companies. It also calls for companies to establish mandatory, independent third-party certification for critical infrastructure and solutions – above all, where dangerous situations can arise, such as with autonomous vehicles or the robots of tomorrow, which will interact directly with humans during production processes. In the future, security and data protection functions are to be preconfigured as a part of technologies, and cybersecurity regulations are to be incorporated into free trade agreements. The Charter’s signatories also call for greater efforts to foster an understanding of cybersecurity through training and continuing education as well as international initiatives.
“Secure digital networks are the critical infrastructure underpinning our interconnected world,” said Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland. “Canada welcomes the efforts of these key industry players to help create a safer cyberspace. Cybersecurity will certainly be a focus of Canada’s G7 presidency year.” The matter is also a top priority for the Munich Security Conference. “Governments must take a leadership role when it comes to the transaction rules in cyberspace,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference. “But the companies that are in the forefront of envisioning and designing the future of cyberspace must develop and implement the standards. That’s why the Charter is so important. Together with our partners, we want to advance the topic and help define its content,” he added.
According to the ENISA Threat Landscape Report, cybersecurity attacks caused damage totaling more than €560 billion worldwide in 2016 alone. For some European countries, the damage was equivalent to 1.6 percent of the gross domestic product. And in a digitalized world, the threats to cybersecurity are steadily growing: According to Gartner, 8.4 billion networked devices were in use in 2017 – a 31-percent increase over 2016. By 2020, the figure is expected to reach 20.4 billion.
