The breach of the Prykarpattyaoblenergo control center and two other energy companies in the fall of 2015, which left 230,000 residents of Ivano- Frankivsk region of Western Ukraine in darkness, is a testament to the growing sophistication of the malicious hackers. The workers logging remotely into the SCADA network, weren’t required to use two-factor authentication, which allowed the attackers to hijack their credentials and gain crucial access to systems that controlled the breakers. “Such threats loom large worldwide and a major area of concern is the nation-wide critical infrastructure applications that deploy SCADA systems in the U.S.,” highlights Ilan Barda, CEO of Radiflow. With SCADA application, once an attacker infiltrates the network from any location, there are no security measures that would prevent the access of the entire network and damage to any connected assets locally or at remote sites. Mahwah, NJ-based Radiflow delivers comprehensive security solutions for Operations Technology (OT) networks that encapsulate in-line security gateways for remote sites and Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for monitoring local operations. “Radiflow’s threat detection algorithms are designed specifically for industrial applications that provides clients the flexibility to mould the solution to their specific need,” states Barda.

In most utilities, the weakest security links are remote site located in sparsely populated areas with limited physical security. Connecting to the network in such remote sites provide the unlimited access locally and to other sites. Of course, the remote maintenance allows fast response and lower operational costs but provides technicians with unlimited and uncontrolled access to all the connected devices, increasing the possibilities of cyber-attacks. Radiflow’s secure gateway establishes a remote connection to the utility site over secure VPN tunnels with discrete access rights for each stakeholder. “Our secure gateway ensures that only authorized stakeholders are accessing the critical network infrastructure, according to the pre-defined rules and task -based restrictions,” says Barda.

Radiflow’s IDS—a central network monitoring tool—which is learning the standard behavior model of the applications in the substation networks. The model accurately detects all kind of anomalies and malicious activities in the local network and alerts concerned authorities.