Radiflow, Cisco partner to provide OT intrusion detection

Radiflow, a Operational Technology (OT) cybersecurity provider with thousands of protected sites across North America and EMEA, has announced a technology partnership with Cisco to provide OT intrusion detection (IDS) with Cisco Network Access Control (NAC).

The incorporation of Radiflow's OT IDS with Cisco-powered network security helps alleviate an inherent problem in industrial networks since many of these devices were never designed with embedded access-control, introducing a slew of cyber-vulnerabilities. Taking advantage of Radiflow's OT IDS, users baseline the behavior of the assets and alerts the CISCO on any deviation in the behavior patterns.

In building management systems (BMS) settings, such as data centers and hospitals, the OT security system has to account for the specific needs and criticalities of different subsystems. These range from HVAC to elevator operation, often overseen by different personnel and departments. By utilizing Radiflow iSID, which performs deep-packet-inspection of all relevant ICS protocols and detects abnormal behavior patterns of the various devices, the CISCO NAC can be used using its generic capabilities to add an active protection layer to a variety of OT networks, which keeps security operations simple and fluent.

The integration of Radiflow IDS with the Cisco NAC was born out of a specific customer's need for protecting a BMS network in a critical financial facility. The need to add an active protection layer to such a complex BMS layer required the in-depth understanding of the BMS network behavior patterns. "We greatly simplify both network security and asset management, especially in complex IT-OT networks" said Ilan Barda, Co-Founder & CEO of Radiflow. "We constantly receive very positive feedback for the IDS's rich mapping capabilities as well as its easy configuration."

The recent sale of a partial ownership stake in Radiflow to the Sabanci Group will allow Radiflow to expand its presence in EMEA and the US. This move, which had begun prior to the sale, includes an expansion of the Radiflow eco-system like the recent integration with the CISCO NAC to provide the best-of-breed solutions for the evolving customer needs.