Over the past decade, critical control systems have increasingly adopted information technologies such as Windows™ Ethernet™, TCP/IP and web services. Unfortunately this means that PLC, DCS and SCADA systems are now exposed to attack from viruses, hackers and possibly terrorists from around the world.

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and industrial control systemshave long been considered immune to the cyber attacks suffered by corporate information systems. Despite industries’ best efforts to isolate control systems from the outside world, the bad guys (and bugs) still get in. Traditional firewalls are too complex for most security professionals to configure correctly and are even harder to set up properly on the plant floor. And once a virus or hacker gets past the control system firewall, the typical PLC or DCS is an easy target for attack. Control devices and protocols offer no authentication, integrity or confidentiality mechanisms and can be completely controlled by any individual that can “ping” the device. Nor can they be easily patched or have security features added to them even when security vulnerabilities are discovered.

The fully distributed Tofino™ Industrial Security Solution is much more than a firewall. With its centrally manageable, dynamically Loadable Security Modules (LSM’s) it can provide encryption, intrusion detection and control protocol-aware security solutions tailored to specific plant floor situations. The Tofino™ Central Management Platform (CMP) will configure, monitor and manage the functions of each remote Tofino™ Appliance so that it can be automatically tuned to meet the security needs of the devices it is protecting.