Page 213 - Cyber Defense eMagazine Special RSA Conference Annual Edition for 2022

Safeguarding Industrial Control Systems

Environments

Preventing internal & external cybersecurity breaches with zero trust OT network segmentation

By Ryan Lung, Senior product manager at TXOne Networks

In the last years, malicious actors have threatened organizations with increasingly higher risks of losses
of money or even of lives. In response, security researchers developed more secure and reliable network
security methodologies. Prior to the invention of the zero trust approach, network defense was typically
based on two separate “trust levels”— inside network and outside network (the internet). Communications
originating from the inner network were considered trustworthy; those from the outer network were not.
As malicious actors have rapidly developed their skills, they have shown clearly that these traditional
methods cannot meet post-digital transformation security needs. This is why the zero trust model insists
that we “never trust, always verify” and even for industrial control system (ICS) networks key ideas
borrowed from it can lead to a much better overall security in OT (operational technology) environments.
OT zero trust cybersecurity provider TXOne Networks shows that these defensive improvements are
more necessary with every passing day.

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