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Industrial Network Defense Solution unveiled by Moxa to overcome modern-day industrial cybersecurity threats

November 18, 2019

Posted by: Anasia D'mello

Moxa Inc., a specialist in industrial communications and networking, introduced its Industrial Network Defense Solution, which is specially designed to secure industrial networks from both an Operations Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) perspective to better address the surging market demand for a comprehensive cybersecurity solution for industrial networks.

Moxa’s Industrial Network Defense Solution includes critical IT cybersecurity technologies such as an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), a key component for defense-in-depth strategies, that has been specifically tailored to protect OT networks from cyberthreats without disrupting industrial operations.

As system availability is often the most important consideration for OT systems, network operators are seeking a more effective and less-impact approach to prevent operations from being affected by cyberthreats and attacks to ensure maximum system availability.

Nowadays, the prevelance of cybersecurity incidents have urged governments to pass laws that require industries such as power, energy, transportation, and critical manufacturing to implement cybersecurity countermeasures into their industrial control systems, especially for critical network infrastructure.

Furthermore, companies in the manufacturing sector have started to enhance the security of their industrial networks to avoid loss of revenue or damage to their reputations. To that end, industrial network security has become a major concern that has driven OT and IT departments to work together to find a holistic solution.

“We believe that the optimal way to orchestrate Industrial Network Defense Solution is to leverage the joint forces of both OT and IT expertise,” said Samuel Chiu, general manager of Moxa’s Industrial Networking Business Group. “With a long and proven track record in industrial networking and protocol expertise, we are excited to enhance industrial network infrastructure with an OT-IT integrated security solution that offers additional defenses to industrial networks and protects the networks beyond just offering network visibility and detection of potential threats.”

Having foreseen the rising demands for industrial network security, Moxa has devoted significant resources towards developing industrial networking devices, such as secure routers and Ethernet switches, with enhanced security features based on the IEC 62443 standard.

In addition to this, Moxa has developed the Industrial Network Defense Solution, which includes IT technologies such as an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and approaches their uses for industrial applications. This allows customers to effectively detect and prevent malicious network behaviours that occur either inside OT networks or from the Internet.

Moxa’s Industrial Network Defense Solution includes an industrial IPS/IDS, EtherFire (industrial next-generation firewall), and MXsecurity (security management software), which collectively provides:

Advanced network protection 

With the deployment of IPS/IDS technologies on industrial networks, users can protect critical assets by blocking and containing Internet worms and minimise the possibility of Trojan attacks through whitelisting and segmentation.

OT-IT integration 

Moxa’s PacketGuard technology can recognise widely used industrial protocols to prevent intrusions and other malicious network behaviour that may hinder network operations.

Centralised security management 

An overview of cyberactivity that allows users to filter issues and automatically provides virtual patching to EtherFire and EtherGuard to ensure that networking devices are updated and protected now and in the future.

“Moxa is devoted to developing our connectivity product portfolio with built-in security features for our customers to develop secure network infrastructure,” said Li Peng, product manager of Moxa’s Industrial Network Security Business Unit.

“With a solid foundation in industrial networking, our new Industrial Network Defense Solution has brought a holistic OT-IT security platform to our OT customers. We will be continuously developing our solutions to meet user demands across various industrial applications.”

The core components of the solution EtherGuard, EtherFire, and MXsecurity will be rolling out starting in the first quarter of 2020.

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