Dubai, UAE, 2 February 2022: Help AG, the cybersecurity arm of Etisalat Digital and the region’s trusted IT security advisor, has partnered with Owl Cyber Defense, the global leader in edge security and cross domain solutions (CDS), to offer high-assurance network protection and secure data transfers to critical infrastructure and OT environments.
A pioneer in data diode technology, Owl is the only solutions provider with over 20 years of experience in cross domain solutions that are enforced with data diodes. Some of the world’s largest industrial and commercial organisations, including multiple U.S. government and security agencies along with 90% of the country’s nuclear power plants, trust Owl with the defense of their most sensitive digital assets.
Commenting on the partnership, Stephan Berner, Chief Executive Officer at Help AG, said: “As regional leaders in cybersecurity, Help AG deploys best-of-breed security technologies to design, implement, and configure complex end-to-end security architectures unique to each customer, with a division dedicated to delivering world-class solutions for the OT space. Our partnership with Owl, a global pioneer in hardware-enforced cybersecurity products, perfectly complements our portfolio to offer a complete suite that elevates our customers to greater levels of protection”.
As the global economy moves into the age of rapid digital transformation, the IT and OT environments of critical infrastructure and industrial processes are becoming increasingly interconnected, deploying IoT and automation to remove human error and vastly improve efficiencies. However, the digitisation of industrial processes means an increase in the digital attack surface for malicious actors. Cyberattacks on critical targets such as utilities, transportation infrastructure and industrial facilities are becoming increasingly common, costing billions of dollars in damage and lost productivity, not to mention putting personnel and the public at risk.
Glenn Braverman, Vice President, International Sales at Owl Cyber Defense, added: “Today’s challenge is how to communicate securely between a facility’s critical systems or data centres, and third-party systems that require data from those systems. Covering every level of the process from individual PLCs to large-scale SCADA, DCS and Building Management and Automation systems, Owl’s hardware-enforced cybersecurity products act as the gatekeeper for data transfer between critical systems and third-party networks. They create a one-way street to ensure that only essential data is transmitted to where it is needed, and absolutely no malicious data, such as malware or viruses, is allowed back in”.
The average organisation has over 300 third-party or external direct connections in their network alone. Cross domain solutions are accredited and validated hardware-enforced cross domain data transfer products, and advanced filtering is built on Owl’s award-winning data diode technology. They are intended for use in high value networks where insurance-based security measures, such as firewalls, SIEM, and IDS, are not sufficient to ensure the security of the trusted domain.
