Rhebo in the media

The U.S. has observed the month of October as the ‘National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM),’ since 2003, as a reminder to various industrial and manufacturing stakeholders, including supply chain vendors, to pause and analyze their cybersecurity environment.

Paessler has announced a partnership with Rhebo to provide joint customers with all-round monitoring and increased security for their IT and OT environments. With an increase in digitisation in the industrial sector, formerly isolated production facilities are opening up to the internet and integrating with IT or becoming digitised.

With an increase in digitisation in the industrial sector, formerly isolated production facilities are opening up to the internet and integrating with IT or becoming digitised. On the one hand, this creates new threat scenarios through viruses, ransomware or Trojans; on the other hand, different conditions prevail in OT systems and different technical prerequisites exist, which present many IT methods or systems with completely new tasks.

While IT and OT networks might be similar, they are not the same. Monitoring OT networks using active tools as freely as in IT networks can be an issue, or even an obstacle, that might negatively impact the stability of Industrial Automation Control Systems (IACS).

Paessler has announced a partnership with Rhebo to provide joint customers with all-round monitoring and increased security for their IT and OT environments.

The attack on a water company in Oldsmar, Florida, is an almost textbook illustration of the security flaws that still prevail in many critical infrastructures. The lack of damage from the attack was a lucky coincidence rather than due to a thorough security concept. The incident underscores the need for intelligent, real-time monitoring in critical infrastructure.

One of the big differentiators between the worlds of IT and OT is their attitude to “active” network tools – those that actually place traffic “onto the wire”. In all but the most sensitive IT networks, this is almost never an issue. The typical IT network is literally awash with different protocols – DNS, DHCP, SMTP, HTTP; the list goes on. In a large, complex IT environment there could be literally dozens of different protocols flying about.

The Swiss company is paying an amount in the double-digit millions for the startup Rhebo. It intends to use the know-how from Saxony to protect its smart electricity meters against cyberattacks.