DCS supplier partners with security provider to beef-up protection
Yokogawa and McAfee enter partnership to enhance security of industrial control systems offering value-added solutions across the industrial automation world
Yokogawa Electric Corporation and McAfee have formed a partnership to offer holistic and value-added IT security solutions for the industrial automation world. Building on Yokogawa’s installed base of control system solutions and McAfee’s cyber security expertise, the partnership addresses the imperative of digital threats to industrial control systems. In particular, the partners will collaborate to offer Yokogawa’s customers seamless solutions to avoid gaps between different IT systems across proprietary solutions and expanded communication channels (e.g., IP, wireless, and mobile) while running common operating systems and applications.
According to McAfee’s recent threats report, cyber-crime, hacktivism, and cyber warfare are on the rise worldwide and are growing ever more sophisticated. Governments, large enterprises, small business, and home users face a wide range of digital threats, and recent prominent cases of industrial sabotage and espionage have escalated these concerns. Today’s cyber security threats mean that industrial control system users and suppliers alike must be increasingly vigilant against current and future intrusions, as human safety and environmental impacts are directly at stake.
While today’s process control systems can take advantage of advanced general-purpose IT, these technologies have made today’s industrial control systems increasingly vulnerable to security intrusions – malicious or otherwise – from both within and outside the plant.
Organizations tasked with running critical infrastructure such as oil and gas pipelines, chemical plants, power stations, and water treatment facilities must look at holistic security systems across two disparate, yet interconnected zones: enterprise IT and industrial control systems.
This partnership addresses the issue that industrial process control systems typically have a three to five times longer lifecycle than typical commercial systems. Since both system technology and cyber threats are ever-changing, automation system suppliers must embrace a lifecycle approach to industrial cyber security.
“Security measures for control systems are indispensable. Yokogawa is continually making stringent efforts to provide our customers optimum control system security solutions, starting with the development of highly secure instruments and systems and extending to the provision of operational support services,” said Nobuaki Konishi, vice president of Yokogawa’s IA systems business division. “This partnership will allow us to combine our technology and plant security know-how with McAfee’s technology to enhance the security of our products and our line-up of security solution services covering the entire lifecycle of our customers’ plants. This will include the integration of anti-virus software with industrial control systems used in the process industries.”
McAfee http://www.mcafee.com
Yokogawa http://www.us.yokogawa.com
Edited by Peter Welander, pwelander(at)cfemedia.com
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