Network Attached Storage

Waterfall Security Solutions Ltd., a company specializing in Unidirectional Security Gateways and data diodes for industrial control networks and critical infrastructures, announced that it has won new patent from United States Patent Office for critical infrastructure networks, patent 8,223,205 for "A Secure Implementation of Network-Based Sensors."

The patent was granted for unfolding how to feed data from network-based security sensors, such as video cameras on control system networks, into security operations centers on less-secure networks, without introducing any threat to the safety or reliability of the sensor network itself.

Whenever there is a video feed, viewers are usually at risk if the feed is made available in less-secure networks and it becomes important to protect the integrity of the original video sensor, and of any other sensing or control equipment on the same network as the video sensor. In this scenario, Hardware-enforced Unidirectional Security Gateways allow security sensor data to be shared, without putting the originating sensors and networks at risk.

The officials at Waterfall Security said that they demonstrated that the hardware-enforced gateways allow the data to reach central monitoring sites and out-sourced monitoring sites without introducing any risk to the originating network. The unidirectional hardware permits video data and other data to leave a protected network, but allows no signal whatsoever back into the network.

"Network-based security sensors and especially video sensors are increasingly part of sophisticated defense-in-depth cyber-security measures at industrial sites," reports Andrew Ginter, Waterfall's director of Industrial Security. "Couple this trend with the trend towards centralized, cloud-based and out-sourced Security Operations Centers and you have a problem. With conventional firewall-based security, every communications channel out of a secure control-system network is also an attack channel back into that network. Putting the safety and reliability of industrial networks at risk, just so you can monitor those sites centrally, is not a good trade-off."

Waterfall's products are deployed in utilities and critical national infrastructures throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Israel.

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