The cybersecurity landscape is rapidly changing, with digital technologies increasingly integrated into industrial control systems.
This digital transformation has introduced new risks, especially with the rise of AI-driven cyber threats. Nozomi Networks is leading the way in securing critical infrastructure, offering solutions that ensure comprehensive protection across OT, IoT, IT, and wireless assets. In this interview, Anton Shipulin, Industrial Cybersecurity Evangelist at Nozomi Networks, discusses how the company addresses these evolving threats and helps organisations comply with stringent regulatory requirements while safeguarding critical and renewable infrastructure.
How does Nozomi secure critical infrastructure in the region amid evolving cybersecurity threats, and how does it contribute to improving operational efficiency?
Critical infrastructure is vital for a nation’s cybersecurity and the functioning of the country. Essential services such as water, electricity, and oil and gas energy rely heavily on these systems, and it is crucial to ensure their continuous, uninterrupted operation. With the rapid digital transformation and the integration of advanced technologies into control systems managing critical infrastructure, these systems are increasingly dependent on digital components. However, this dependence introduces new risks.
Unauthorised access and potential cyberattacks pose significant threats to these systems, as malicious actors can exploit vulnerabilities to gain control. It is crucial to monitor these systems closely and identify any deviations from normal operations. Detecting cyberattacks, process anomalies, or other irregular behaviours at an early stage is essential for maintaining security and ensuring the longevity of these facilities.
Nozomi Networks addresses these challenges by providing real-time monitoring of network traffic, process telemetry, vulnerabilities, and asset changes within industrial control systems. This approach allows for the timely detection of anomalies and attacks, enabling prompt responses to safeguard critical infrastructure and ensure its resilience.
How can organisations achieve full-spectrum protection across OT, IoT, IT, and wireless assets, and what solutions does Nozomi offer to address these complex security challenges?
Our primary focus is on securing industrial control systems and cyber-physical systems, including the Internet of Things (IoT). When it comes to industrial control systems, they often comprise a variety of components, including pure OT elements like controllers and PLCs, as well as IT components such as network devices, routers, switches, PCs, laptops, and servers running traditional operating systems like Windows.
It is critical not to focus solely on protecting OT systems. Rather, organisations must ensure protection across all components surrounding these critical systems. To address this, our solution expands beyond just supporting OT protocols. While we excel in supporting OT protocols with deep packet inspection for anomaly detection and attack identification, we also support IT systems and the most common IT protocols like DNS, SNMP, and others. This is achieved through passive network monitoring, which ensures visibility across both OT and IT environments.
For enhanced asset visibility and discovery, we’ve added active discovery components, including smart polling, which queries devices for details. Additionally, we’ve expanded our solutions to incorporate various types of sensors, including network sensors and recently, endpoint sensors. These endpoint sensors can be deployed on systems such as Windows, Linux, and MacOS, especially in areas where network sensors cannot be installed.
Furthermore, with the increasing adoption of wireless networks in industrial environments, it is essential to monitor and protect these networks to prevent unauthorised access. In some cases, clients may prohibit wireless networks entirely. However, even in such scenarios, monitoring wireless communications remains vital to detect unauthorised devices, such as rogue wireless access points or USB dongles, that could pose a security risk.
Overall, Nozomi offers a comprehensive solution that ensures protection across wireless networks, wired networks, and endpoints, providing organisations with full-spectrum security across their OT, IoT, IT, and wireless assets.
With the rise of AI-driven cyber threats, how do you see the threat landscape evolving, and what steps is Nozomi taking to stay ahead of these emerging risks?
The rise of AI technologies is both a beneficial and accelerating force for cybersecurity, but unfortunately, it is also being exploited by cybercriminals to enhance their attacks. Attackers leverage AI for tasks such as vulnerability scanning, spam generation, and even coding attacks. This makes it easier for them to create new and more sophisticated attacks, accelerating the pace of the threat landscape.
For organisations, this presents a significant challenge, as AI-driven threats allow attackers to quickly evolve their methods, making it critical for asset owners to detect these attacks in a timely and precise manner. This is where Nozomi Networks focuses its efforts. Our solution is not only designed for network detection but also for understanding industrial and IoT protocols, which is crucial in accurately identifying attacks.
As the frequency and complexity of attacks grow, the amount of data that needs to be processed increases exponentially, making it harder to correlate and analyse all the relevant information. To address this challenge, we integrate AI and machine learning into our platform for alert correlation and generating insights. These technologies help us manage and analyse vast amounts of data, allowing us to detect threats more effectively.
Moreover, as more industrial automation vendors and cloud providers implement AI-based systems, it is essential to protect these components from potential threats. AI-based systems themselves are now vulnerable, and our focus includes monitoring attempts to attack these systems, ensuring that they are adequately safeguarded.
Nozomi is adapting to the evolving threat landscape by incorporating AI and machine learning for better threat detection and data processing, while also expanding our focus to protect AI-based systems in industrial automation and cloud environments.
Could you share insights into Nozomi’s complete cyber-physical protection offerings, particularly in securing critical and renewable infrastructure? How do your solutions enable compliance in highly regulated sectors?
Nozomi’s solution focuses on comprehensive monitoring across a wide range of environments, including wireless networks, endpoint activities, and IoT systems. Our offerings include a diverse set of sensors for network, wireless, and endpoint monitoring, alongside management components for on-premises environments and cloud-based components for information collection and analysis.
By providing real-time visibility and continuous monitoring, our solutions ensure that critical infrastructure, including renewable energy systems, is secured against potential cyber threats. Furthermore, our solutions help organisations meet the compliance requirements of highly regulated sectors by ensuring that all systems are continuously monitored, vulnerabilities are detected early, and appropriate actions are taken to mitigate risks in real time.
How does Nozomi ensure compliance with highly regulated sectors, especially considering the growing number of cybersecurity frameworks and regulations globally?
Compliance with cybersecurity regulations is increasingly important, with various frameworks emerging across the globe, such as those in Europe, the United States (e.g., New York City’s cybersecurity regulations), and other regions. One of the key elements of compliance is ensuring proper asset discovery, asset management, threat detection, and vulnerability management.
To help organisations meet these regulatory requirements, Nozomi offers comprehensive solutions that focus on asset discovery, threat detection, and vulnerability identification. By addressing these key components, our solutions ensure the security of critical networks and data, enabling organisations to comply with regulations while also enhancing their overall cybersecurity posture.
Image Credit: Nozomi Networks
