ARIA Cybersecurity Calls for New Approach to Securing Operational Technology from Sophisticated Cyberattacks (Boston, MA)

New webinar featuring ARIA Cybersecurity and former Pfizer security architect addresses OT cybersecurity risks faced by manufacturers 

Boston, February 01, 2024 – ARIA Cybersecurity Solutions, a CSPi business (NASDAQ: CSPi), has warned of the rapidly escalating cybersecurity risks facing companies with operational technology (OT) in the manufacturing sector. In a new webinar, “How to Safeguard Your OT Environment”, Gary Southwell, chief executive of ARIA Cybersecurity is joined by Jim LaBonty, formerly Global Head of Automation Engineering at Pfizer Inc. They discuss how current passive and active cloud-based cybersecurity solutions are failing to guard against a new era of AI-enabled attacks—creating substantial financial, regulatory, and reputational risks in manufacturing sectors such as pharmaceuticals.  

The webinar demonstrates how ARIA Cybersecurity’s breakthrough solution for protecting OT environments, AZT (ARIA ZERO TRUST) PROTECT, would stop the SolarWinds attack and other recent high-profile attacks on critical infrastructure where existing defences have failed.  

“ARIA’s AZT PROTECT deploys quickly, requires no rebooting, and supports the legacy operating systems common in the pharma industry,” notes Jim LaBonty. “It automatically protects their production applications and operating systems without the need for security patches.” 

The webinar covers:  

• Why today’s cybersecurity solutions need to be augmented in the OT world. Passive solutions are required but are unable to stop zero-day and sophisticated attacks, while cloud-based next-generation antivirus (NGAV) solutions, imported from the IT world, are proving insufficient to protect complex OT environments from the sophisticated attacks. This is leaving OT open to supply chain-based attacks, sophisticated intrusions, and application-level attacks.  
• Why constant patching is unsustainable and ineffective? Patching is the only current defense against application-level exploits , but patching disrupts production and only guards against known common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). As patches are only available for less than half the known CVEs at any point in time, and cannot address unpublished exposures, this large unpatched surface is leaving OT production applications highly exposed.  
• Why the SolarWinds attack was a watershed moment. Existing IT/OT protections were powerless to stop the havoc caused across the SolarWinds supply chain in 2020. Software-based supply chain attacks of this nature have proliferated in the period since, now running at around 700 per year.  

• How “Dark AI” is being harnessed to exploit new vulnerabilities at great speed. Sophisticated attackers are using so-called “Dark AI” to rapidly iterate the indicators of compromise (IOCs) within their cyberattacks, allowing them to become polymorphic and able to bypass NGAV defenses.  
• Why OT cybersecurity defenses must prepare for the unknown. For example, security researchers recently highlighted a set of completely new process injection techniques targeting the Windows OS. These were found to be fully undetectable when tested against five of the leading cloud based NGAV solutions. By contrast, AZT PROTECT stops them all out-of-the box, without requiring updates. 

Launched in July 2023, AZT PROTECT is being deployed in industrial settings that use OT to manage production infrastructure supporting functions such as energy, utilities, manufacturing, and distribution. A major Fortune-500 chemical manufacturer recently rolled out AZT PROTECT to protect its critical production applications. The solution is also being deployed by a western intelligence agency to protect its critical intelligence gathering and analysis operations from cyberattack.  

Unlike leading NGAV and endpoint detection response (EDR) solutions, AZT PROTECT is custom-built for OT environments, offering protection against the most advanced zero-day and supply chain attacks, without the need for daily cloud updates and constant security patching. It reduces the risk of application vulnerability exploits to near zero by neutralizing attacks in real time before they cause harm, using a revolutionary AI-driven patented technique for analyzing executable code, scripts, and processes. 

“Our latest webinar explores the challenges of securing OT environments such as the production floors of  pharmaceuticals, which typically feature legacy OS equipment, limited computing capacity, and cannot be taken offline monthly,” says Gary Southwell. “Existing solutions are proven to not fully protect these valuable OT assets from a new style of cyberattack, as well as being complex to deploy and update. AZT PROTECT is the perfect complement to these existing defenses; it is up and running within minutes, requires no staff training or expertise, and provides protection against all forms of cyberattack, both known and unknown.” 

To access the full webinar, please visit:  

https://info.ariacybersecurity.com/webinar-safeguard-ot-environments  

ABOUT ARIA CYBERSECURITY SOLUTIONS  

ARIA Cybersecurity Solutions, a business of CSPi Inc., recognizes that better, stronger, more effective cybersecurity starts with a smarter approach. Our solutions provide new ways for organizations to protect their most critical assets—they can shield their critical applications from attack with our AZT solution, while monitoring internal traffic, device-level logs, and alert output with our ARIA ADR solution to substantially improve threat detection and surgically disrupt cyberattacks and data exfiltration. Customers in a range of industries rely on our solutions to accelerate incident response, automate breach detection, and protect their most critical assets and applications—no matter where they are stored, used, or accessed. Learn more at ARIACybersecurity.com 

ARIA Cybersecurity Media Contact 

Gary Southwell 

info@ariacybersecurity.com