Owl Cyber Defense Solutions (“Owl”) announced the release of IXD, a cross-domain solution developed specifically for critical infrastructure network cybersecurity. This development represents a revolutionary milestone, per its maker, in protecting the networks of critical infrastructure organizations around the world, including power generation, oil and gas, transmission and distribution, water / wastewater, and more.
“Firewalls and data diodes have their place, but in the face of technological imperatives like IT/OT convergence and data-driven operational intelligence, combined with increased risk from nation-state backed threats, they’re simply not good enough,” said Ken Walker, CTO of Owl. “IXD completely transcends the traditional OT security paradigm with content inspection beyond next-generation firewalls, the hardware-enforced segmentation of data diodes, and the advanced data-filtering engine of a software guard all in one powerful device.”
This cross domain solution (CDS) is a software and hardware information-security system that controls data transfers by enforcing an organization’s security policies to monitor, restrict, and/or filter the flow of information between trusted and untrusted domains.
IXD is designed to transfer and filter multiple protocols and data types either unidirectionally or bidirectionally. Available with support for many common industrial protocols and applications, including UDP, TCP, REST/HTTPS, OSIsoft PI System, Oracle TNS, FTP/FTPS/SFTP, Syslog, and SQL Database synchronization, IXD enables critical infrastructure and industrial operators to control and filter content transferred between networks, per Owl. Enforced by mandatory access controls (MAC) configurable to support their internal security policies, IXD provides high assurance and high availability far beyond next-generation firewalls, its maker notes. IXD also includes built-in hardware enforcement through data diodes which provides additional network segmentation benefits including protocol breaks that disrupt attack vectors that software-based firewalls simply can’t stop.
“Owl’s leadership in innovation has redefined the OT network security market, consistently developing decades beyond any competing solution in security, performance, flexibility, and ease-of-use,” said Robert Stalick, CEO of Owl. “Now we’re leading the world into the next chapter in OT security with IXD. Owl customers worldwide in power generation, oil & gas, and other critical infrastructure fields can now leverage the same transformational, fit-for-purpose CDS technology trusted to protect classified networks, state secrets, and weapons systems.”
More information on XDI is available here.
