It is with a heavy heart that we at ARC recognize the passing of cybersecurity pioneer Michael Assante.  

ARC recently spent the week at Honeywell User Group Americas conference 2019 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas.  This year's HUG set another attendance record, and Honeywell had more cybersecurity content at this year’s HUG than ever.

In ARC’s Cybersecurity Workshop, experts and participants discussed cybersecurity trends and developments in technologies, standards, practices and guidelines.

Cybersecurity threat detection and response supplier Dragos posted a new blog today that sheds some new light on the attack group know as XENOTIME, which is the same group responsible for the TRISIS/TRITON malware attack on a Triconex process safety system at a still unnamed Middle Eastern petrochemical facility back in 2017.  

ARC will be co-hosting a webinar with ICS cybersecurity supplier Owl Cyber Defense on June 26 that centers around the company’s new DiOTa data diode.  Unidirectional communication solutions, also referred to as data diodes, can be an attractive alternative to firewalls and can provide a maximum degree of security for IoT applications where many sensors and devices are communicating data to cloud-based applications for analytics, asset management, and a host of other applications.  

Addressing the crucial issue of cybersecurity for smart buildings is a challenge.  Like the manufacturing sector, the building automation sector is going through its own digital transformation.  

 The route to greater plant security is to make lower levels more secure.

At the most recent ARC Industry Forum in Orlando this past February, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eddie Habibi, Founder and CEO of PAS.  You can see the video here at our YouTube Channel.  We had a chance to discuss a wide range of topics, from the convergence of cybersecurity and safety to the importance of having a good backup and response plan in case of a cyber-attack.

With many different devices, assets, and protocols on the rig network, it is critical that Rig Controls are completely segmented. With limited access for patching/updates, security devices must be virtually maintenance free. NOV researched various different devices to accomplish their objective, and eventually decided on unidirectional data transfer devices for remote monitoring, also known as “Data Diodes,” which physically ensure that only one-way communication occurs. After almost a year of testing, NOV reached a mature architecture that connects the rig controls to data diodes from Owl Cyber Defense.