Protecting the nation’s industrial sector through a joint effort to improve cybersecurity across business and operational systems.
IronNet Cybersecurity, a leader in network detection and response (NDR) and real-time threat sharing, and Dragos, Inc., the global leader in cybersecurity for industrial controls systems (ICS)/operational technologies (OT), today announced that they are launching a new joint initiative designed to help ensure the security of the nation’s critical infrastructure through an integrated IT-OT approach to cybersecurity.
The IronNet and Dragos joint initiative spans both companies’ respective technical and business domains and is focused on integrating the IronNet IronDome and the Dragos Neighborhood Keeper threat intelligence sharing and community-wide visibility solutions in order to increase the overall security posture of organizations — and enable them to focus on core business and digital transformation efforts. As threats to business and operational networks increase in frequency and sophistication, this “collective defense” approach can provide organizations across public and private sectors with an effective way to defend against highly organized and well-funded cyber attacks.
Tom Fanning, Chairman, President and CEO of Southern Company and a Commissioner of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, said, “As we highlighted in the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission report, two of the six pillars of our recommendations — Reshaping the Cyber Ecosystem and Operationalizing Cybersecurity Collaboration Between the Public and Private Sectors — emphasize the importance of collaborating to provide a better and more resilient cyber defense for our country. IronNet and Dragos exemplify this approach with their complementary approaches to collective defense as an effective way to protect our critical infrastructure.”
Threat actors driven to disrupt operations are eyeing vulnerabilities in the IT space as a viable entry point to OT infrastructure. Though OT infrastructure was once locked down by hardwired assets and segmented environments that were difficult to breach, the digitalization of operations has markedly increased connectivity changing the security posture of these industrial environments and making them more vulnerable.
“Every year it seems the industry has multiple wake up calls whether it’s from state actors or criminal networks. That risk, coupled with the digital transformation of our infrastructure, is simply not reducing. However, our infrastructure companies want to do more but they want to do it as a community instead of every company having to protect themselves in isolation. We have come together to work hand-in-hand with IronNet to ensure we’re solving customer challenges through an integrated IT-OT collective defense approach so that we can all better protect our communities,” said Robert M. Lee, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Dragos, Inc.
“IronNet shares a common vision with Dragos to bring a holistic cybersecurity approach to organizations in their battle against nation-state adversaries. IT security must secure the network and data on it, whether on-premise or in the cloud, without limiting business productivity, while OT security must secure the processes, people, and environments to ensure the safety, availability, and resilience of operational systems,” said IronNet Co-CEO General (Ret.) Keith Alexander. “IronNet’s mission is to defend the nation through collective defense, and the security of critical infrastructure is at the core of our commitment.”
Dragos’s Neighborhood Keeper is a collective defense and community-wide visibility solution that provides a more effective industrial cyber defense. It does this by providing network visibility, performing threat detection across participants, and sharing anonymized threat intelligence at machine-speed ensuring that no participant’s sensitive data or identity ever leaves their environment. IronNet’s network detection and response (NDR) solution, IronDefense, uses behavioral analytics to detect unknown cyber threats on enterprise networks, while its IronDome solution shares anonymized threat data in real time within a secure ecosystem, providing other community members with a new level of visibility into potential incoming threats.
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