Thales teams with Nozomi Networks to expand cyber incident detection capabilities on industrial infrastructure

• Thales, a world leader in data protection and cybersecurity, and Nozomi Networks, a leader in OT and IoT security, have joined forces to provide critical infrastructure operators with a set of advanced tools for controlling their production facilities and industrial assets by detecting cyber incidents in their network traffic.

• Nozomi Networks is developing the only OT (Operational Technology) sensor currently with Level 1 ANSSI certification for visualisation of network traffic, physical sites and industrial infrastructure.

• The partnership leverages the OT and industrial IoT cybersecurity solutions and expertise of Nozomi Networks to round out the managed security services offering of Thales, which is already a global Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) and a market leader in security for critical industrial systems.

As their networks become increasingly interconnected, industrial operators need to rely on dedicated, non-intrusive network supervision systems to stay protected in a constantly evolving cyberthreat environment.

Thales, in partnership with Nozomi Networks, is already helping a number of global players to enhance their industrial cybersecurity and improve their incident detection and response capabilities by installing network sensors at their sites around the world and providing day-to-day network supervision via Security Operation Centres (SOCs). These solutions enable Thales to analyse suspicious behaviour and unexpected traffic to and from the external network and to detect malicious activity targeting industrial information systems.

Thales is a market leader in security for critical industrial systems. OT network sensors from Nozomi Networks will be used at its National Digital Exploitation Centre (NDEC) in Wales and will soon be deployed at the new NDEC that opened in Canada on 23 April 2023. The partnership expands Thales’s expertise in network monitoring and cyberthreat detection and response for critical industrial infrastructure. The network sensors developed by Nozomi Networks and their ability to parse large numbers of industrial protocols make it possible to visualise network traffic with a high degree of precision, provide detailed identification of industrial assets and detect operational anomalies caused by known as well as unknown cyberthreats.

 

The specific cyber challenges faced by industrial operators

Companies with an OT infrastructure, particularly in the manufacturing, automation and transportation industries, have little or no scope for operational downtime and are therefore highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. Attacks are rarely identical, so they are difficult to anticipate, making it especially important to improve the resilience of these companies’ industrial systems. Network sensors are positioned at critical points on the network in order to quickly identify attacks and initiate appropriate action in a timely fashion.