Portland, Maine Kepware Technologies has partnered industrial automation systems vendor Industrial Defender to deliver comprehensive, integrated cybersecurity technology for use with KEPServerEX. In joining the companys Industrial Defender Enabled Partner Program, Kepware will strengthen the cybersecurity posture of its automation control system technology by delivering functionality to monitor, alert and defend automation systems from compromise due to cybersecurity vulnerabilities and attacks.
Industrial Defender offers a completely integrated cybersecurity solution designed to protect the industrial control system and SCADA environment. Kepware will deliver a jointly developed version of Industrial Defenders host intrusion-detection software as a new, free-of-charge, KEPServerEX Security Agent Driver Plug-in. This new plug-in will provide valuable security information with the ability to track and monitor cybersecurity parameters of the environment, including failed login attempts, file system consistency, removable media access, registry modifications, process and socket violations, and many other HMI/SCADA system parameters. When an Industrial Defender Security Event Management Console (SEM) is present, it will aggregate, correlate, store and report security events from all systems using KEPServerEX as well as other systems being monitored by the console. The SEM uses agent information to monitor the cybersecurity posture of the control system environment and also provide secure back up of all related configuration files. The new KEPServerEX Security Agent Plug-in will be available from Kepware, its sales channels and Kepware OEMs.
Industrial Defender is now part of the Connected with Kepware partner program and the two companies will work together to expand their offerings in the areas of both OPC and industrial protocol including security, monitoring, intrusion detection and prevention.
The situation with cybersecurity continues to be very dynamic. Application software suppliers are helping with new security solutions and better access management tools. These suppliers now know that they must build security into their products and partner with experts to jointly develop new comprehensive approaches that require less effort," said Craig Resnick, Research Director, ARC Advisory Group. Both Kepware and Industrial Defender are major players in their respective spaces, and this partnership will enable the automation marketplace to take a significant step forward in the adoption of security practices and the installation of an appropriate infrastructure.
