By Isolated Networks CEO/President Mark Feil
Let’s get real.
Legacy networking models attempt to partition and secure systems but are unable to create a closed network. In today’s world of legacy infrastructure and connected factory-floor devices, we are simply partitioning devices and using perimeter defenses.
In other words, your IoT/OT systems are open to the public Internet.
But here’s the facts: today, 98% of all IoT devices are unencrypted and critical manufacturing vulnerabilities have surged by 230% in six months.
The good news is that 2024 is ushering in new technologies that manufacturing IT leaders can successfully leverage to close IoT/OT vulnerabilities.
Key to the approach is the ability to deploy secure networks away from corporate networks and the Internet so that the factory floor is “offline” yet connected. This tactic is usually only employed after a breach occurs when networks are quarantined, and devices “sniffed’ for malware. The problem is that these networks lose too much functionality and can’t remain isolated forever.
But as factories continue to modernize, more things will suddenly show up on your network that weren’t there previously, like 12,000 new pipeline sensors.
New secure-networking technologies, however, can spin up and isolate new networks quickly at lower costs using advanced “closed-networking” techniques that essentially keep networks and their connected devices in quarantine mode. That means, for example, that your Windows servers can be cordoned off indefinitely without impacting functionality and excessive costs and labor to secure them.
Put more specifically, these new technologies can isolate 3rd-party devices from the LAN/WAN while encrypting all traffic at network ingress. Any unknown device on the network can be “seen” and quarantined immediately. Devices can be seen and managed at the device level as well, previously unheard of in network-security monitoring.
Even better, these technologies are cost effective and plug-and-play, a win-win for your CFO and IT team.
And that’s good news since the Wall Street Journal recently reported that old code piling up raises the risk of hacks and other breaches, even on new devices. The article is aptly entitled “The Invisible $1.52 Trillion Problem: Clunky Old Software.”
These network-technology advancements are also just in time for geopolitical events. According to a recently issued multi-global-government warning, pro-Russia hacktivists are targeting and compromising small-scale OT systems in North American and Europe, including water and wastewater systems (WWS), dams, energy, and food and agriculture sectors. The hacktivists seek to compromise modular, Internet-exposed industrial control systems (ICS) through their software components.
One piece of recommended advice? Limit exposure of IoT/OT systems to the Internet.
If you haven’t heard of these new secure-networking technologies, you’re not alone. They have been developed by Isolated Networks. We are a founding team of seasoned IT executives and network- and cloud-engineers that have taken network segmentation and isolation one step further than any other solution on the market, including recent acquisitions you may have heard of.
Our solutions are agentless and SaaS-based and will close your open manufacturing networks in one click.
If you’ve still got an open-network strategy, close it with Isolated Networks.
Want some proof? Contact us.
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