KEYNETIC - Hardening of industrial networks, decreasing the attack surface of Industry 4.0

TECHNOLOGY

The current digitization process of the industrial sector towards Industry 4.0 raises new risks and threats, since traditionally isolated machines are connected to IT networks. To prevent production from being affected, it is important to properly protect the critical assets of the factories.
The recommendations for industrial network and system security, such as IEC 62443, are built on segmentation and defense in depth techniques. Segmentation is based on the definition of trust zones or segments, so if a malicious device or a previously trusted one is compromised, the entire segment is compromised since there is no protection within the segment.
As a result, it is essential to increase the control over all the connected devices and limit lateral traffic to improve the protection of industrial networks. The SDN technology allows to implement a more advanced model for network access control based on zero-trust and micro-segmentation, which enables the hardening of industrial network.