The increasing connectivity of devices in the manufacturing industry following the trends of industry 4.0 and digital transformation resulted in supply chain attacks becoming the new weapon of choice for cyber attackers. With operational technology (OT) such as shop f loor equipment and assets rapidly becoming more intelligent and automated, every connected device in the entire infrastructure of the OT environment poses a risk for cyber security attacks. The rise of crypto currency and its added anonymity has further enabled hackers to encrypt critical assets in the manufacturing environment and demand ransoms for their return. As more and more breaches and cyber incidents occur every month, the need for a comprehensive and resilient cyber security solution is clear.

Enter TXOne Networks, a global leader in Industrial IoT security that believes it is critical to protect OT assets from the moment they arrive on the shop f loor. “We secure OT environments by placing 360-degree protection around the entire life cycle of the asset,” says Dr. Terence Liu, CEO of TXOne Networks. A subsidiary company of Trend Micro, TXOne Networks offers cyber security solutions tailored to protect industrial control systems (ICS), ensuring reliability and safety from cyber attacks. With the mission to safeguard and accelerate the progress of automation and data exchange in the industrial universe, TXOne Networks offers a robust suite of cyber security solutions comprising their Trend Micro Portable Security 3scanning device, their Stellar series, and their Edge series.

Maximized Protection Coverage

TXOne’s solutions provide maximized protection based on the OT zero trust methodology. OT zero trust includes device inspection, preserving critical applications and services, network segmentation, and virtual patching. The Trend Micro Portable Security 3inspectionsolution, developed by TXOne Networks,needs no installation to ensure incoming or onboarding assets are malware-free. Once an asset is brought into the shop f loor and the user activates TXOne’s endpoint protection solution, Stellar, it secures the endpoint with a trust list, preventing malware from running and preserving critical applications. Finally, when assets start communicating with other devices on the industrial network, TXOne’s Edge series segments the network into easily administered groups, blocks suspicious or undesired behavior, and applies virtual patching to protect unpatched or legacy assets. These solutions empower stakeholders to deploy OT zero trust-based policies in their facilities.

Trend Micro Portable Security 3 is an easy to use, installation free malware scan tool, unique for its USB stick form factor. When plugged into an asset, Portable Security will launch an antivirus inspection and check for any malware hiding inside the targeted system. At the end of an inspection, the LED on the Portable Security USB stick will turn red if it successfully finds malware that requires further action from the user.

The light will turn blue if no malware is found, or green to show that malware was found and removed with no further action necessary. Portable Security is a great tool for both inbound inspection of devices on the customer’s end as well as outbound inspection from the supplier’s end, helping them comply with regulations such as the new SEMI E187 standards for the semiconductor industry.

TXOne’s Stellar series includes three products that streamline and coordinate endpoint protection. Stellar Protect secures modernized assets, Stellar Enforce secures legacy assets, and the centralized console Stellar One manages both. Stellar Protect is an AI-based industrial antivirus solution which is uniquely able to avoid the false positives common in AI-powered malware detection by recognizing and trust listing reputable or popular OT applications with its large library of OT applications. Stellar Enforce, on the other hand, is a trust listing solution that scans, learns, and locks down the applications or services running on the target system. This disallows any other applications or services, including malware, to be executed on that system in the future. “With Stellar Protect and Stellar Enforce, we can maximize protection coverage within a bigger manufacturing environment or shop floor while the Stellar One management console allows both to be managed from a single pane of glass,” says Liu.

We secure OT environments by placing 360 degree protection around the entire life cycle of the asset

The Go-To Solution for Network Protection

Apart from their asset inspection and the endpoint protection solutions, TXOne Networks offers the Edge series, which includes the Edge IPS and Edge Fire, as network protection solutions. Several organizations that work in the extremely demanding and complex process of semiconductor fabrication have found value in TXOne Networks’ Edge IPS, which shields system vulnerabilities with network-based virtual patching to allow maximized productivity and security without the delays necessary to apply updates. Edge IPS can recognize several different OT protocols, including the most popular protocol in the semiconductor industry, SECS/GEM.

TXOne Networks includes the ‘ICS Foresight Strike’ feature with the Edge series, which allows these next-generation IPSes and firewalls to automatically learn network behavior and then build a baseline template with their machine learning technology. Once the user approves these baseline policies, Edge series solutions will detect and block any incorrect or malicious commands that hackers might try to send.

Continuing on in their effort to help their customers secure their operations, the company is building a SaaS platform to visualize each operational environment and the actual interactions between critical assets. After identifying normal operational behavior, TXOne Networks’ solutions can immediately identify and stop undesired or malicious behavior from assets to keep the operation running.

Exhibiting incredible growth over the past couple of years, TXOne Networks shows no signs of slowing down and is already equipped with a plan that includes global hiring and expansion. “We are fully throttled to establish our leadership in ICS cybersecurity,” concludes Liu.