Vendors Gear Up for Industrial Cyber Security

“我们认为这个市场只是处于休息ing open,” says Brian Ahern, president and chief executive officer of Industrial Defender Inc. (www.industrialdefender.com), a Mansfield, Mass. , cyber security firm. According to estimates compiled by the company, global spending on real-time system security will total about $250 million this year by so-called critical infrastructure industries, which include oil and gas, chemical, power, water and transportation. But Industrial Defender sees that number rising to about $2.2 billion by 2011. The numbers are based on an estimated 11,000 plants worldwide in the target vertical industries, Ahern says.

Outsourced cyber security

To better position itself for that opportunity, Ahern’s company, previously known as Verano Inc., changed its name to Industrial Defender on May 15, and also launched a new outsourced cyber risk management and monitoring service aimed at the real-time process control, and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) environments. The service, known as the Industrial Defender Co-Managed Security Service (CMSS) is based on the company’s September 2006 acquisition of e-DMZ Security LLC, a Wilmington, Del.-based provider of outsourced security management for control systems.

The CMSS forms the third and final component of what Ahern calls a completely integrated Cyber Risk Protection Lifecycle portfolio of services and products for the process
control system/SCADA market. The other elements are Industrial Defender Consulting Services, based on the acquisition of Houston-based cyber security consultants plantadata Technologies Inc. In January last year, and the Industrial Defender Technology Suite, a family of hardware/software products that can be used to provide a “defense in depth” solution within a controls/SCADA environment. Industrial Defender products are already deployed in some 1,100 plants worldwide, Ahern says.

Other suppliers are also gearing up to meet the cyber security needs of control systems customers. Siemens Energy & Automation Inc. (www.sea.siemens.com), the big Alpharetta, Ga.-based automation vendor, recently launched its Scalance S family of industrial Ethernet security modules, for example. Offered in three module configurations, the Scalance S is designed to offer the functionality and protection of a firewall and virtual private network (VPN), Siemens says, allowing only real-time authenticated communication between authorized devices within an automation network.

Controllers certified secure

In other recent activity, Wurldtech Labs announced on May 15 that six industrial controllers have achieved Achilles Security Certification following an initial round of testing. Controllers earning Achilles Level 1 Certification are the Centum CS 3000 R3 Field Control Unit, from Yokogawa Electric Corp.; the Centum CS 3000 R3 Vnet Router, also from Yokogawa; the deltav Controller, from Emerson Process Management; the prosafe-RS
Vnet/IP Safety Control Unit, from Yokogawa; the Tricon Safety Controller, from Invensys Process Systems/Triconex; and the Trusted Safety Controller, from ICS Triplex.

Wurldtech Labs is an independent division of Wurldtech Security Technologies, a Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada , industrial automation security firm, which formally launched the Achilles assurance platform in March to provide a benchmark for the certification of secure controllers deployed in industrial systems. Level 1 Controller Certification involves more than 30 million individual tests to ensure that a controller meets Level 1 of the Achilles Certification Criteria. The Level 1 criteria document and the certification results for the six certified products are available for review on the Wurldtech Web site, atwww.wurldtech.com