Nov. 1, 2022. - Mission Secure , a leader in OT and ICS cybersecurity, announced the release of its Sentinel 5.0 platform, a milestone in enabling Zero Trust security architectures for critical infrastructure.
The Sentinel 5.0 platform provides dynamic, context-aware cybersecurity policy monitoring and enforcement for operational technology systems. “Zero Trust architectures are the most powerful and practical way to increase safety and reduce risk for industrial cyber-physical processes,” said Jens Meggers, executive chairman of Mission Secure. “With Sentinel 5.0, we are launching a game changer that allows granular implementation of access policies from the physical signal all the way to the cloud.
It is whitelisting on steroids: industrial strength, context-driven, intrusion prevention and mitigation.”
Why zero trust?
Zero Trust is a well-established IT cybersecurity principle that has yet to be widely adopted in industrial OT. It eliminates implicit trust in the network perimeter by validating every stage of digital interaction continuously. In the absence of Zero Trust architectures, industrial operators often rely on disjointed collections of tools, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and endpoint vulnerability scanning, without fully gaining the ability to manage and secure industrial operating environments.
A powerful policy engine
With Sentinel 5.0, Mission Secure launches a platform that allows operators to define and enforce granular policies based on a wide range of inputs, including network traffic, attempted remote access, asset firmware versions and vulnerabilities, and the actual digital or analog signal generated by physical devices. While the Sentinel 5.0 platform includes standard capabilities such as passive monitoring, asset discovery, and alerting, the platform’s core component is a fine-grained policy engine that enables highly sophisticated, OT-specific workflows:
- Creating access control policies to define the conditions under which users or applications can send commands to an industrial device.
- Identifying firmware state and vulnerabilities, as well as limiting access to only fully-patched systems.
- Alerting and acting on anomalies in physical signals, and isolating systems that show abnormal behavior.
- Supporting root cause analysis by correlating network events with sensor outputs.
Mission Secure also announced a technology partnership with Verve Industrial , the leading provider of IT-OT asset inventory and vulnerability management solutions. “Going beyond perimeter detection to protect the most vulnerable and critical OT assets at the endpoint level is a significant step forward toward securing the cyber-physical process,” said John Livingston, CEO of Verve. “Zero Trust is a long journey for industrial operators,” said Chet Mroz, president of Mission Secure.
“Sentinel 5.0 marks a bold step into the future for our customers as they start their journey.”
