Trend Micro, a global leader in cybersecurity, has launched a first of its kind intent-based industrial intelligent IPS array for industrial environments, designed to protect Bahrain’s large-scale industrial networks from critical attacks whilst reducing OPEX and CAPEX.

Aligned with Bahrain Economic Vision 2030, the country is transitioning to a diversified economy with local manufacturing, along with innovative Smart Cities systems with complex industrial networks.

At the same time, Bahrain needs to secure these smart manufacturing and Smart Cities systems from cyber-attacks. As a result, the Middle East and Africa’s Internet of Things cybersecurity market is set to top USD 3.2 billion by 2025, posting 4-fold growth from 2015, according to Mordor Intelligence.

“Bahrain is at the forefront of smart manufacturing and Smart Cities innovation – and needs to secure these Internet of Things networks from cyber-attacks,” said Assad Arabi, Managing Director – Gulf Cluster, Trend Micro. “Our EdgeIPS Pro is the ideal solution for Bahrain’s manufacturing and Smart Cities leaders to enhance protection from the cloud to control, and to organize network segmentation.”

EdgeIPS Pro, developed by TXOne Networks, has been specially architected to meet the needs of global smart factory owners in industries like automotive and semiconductor manufacturing, who run centrally-managed or highly-automated factories featuring multiple production lines. It is part of Trend Micro’s extensive smart factory security suite that covers every layer – from comprehensive perimeters for the cloud, to corporate IT, site manufacturing operation, supervisory control, and control layers.

The IT and OT convergence in smart factories has brought enormous productivity benefits, but it has also increased the cybersecurity risks of malware infection and unauthorized access. This could completely stall production as assets deploy a flat network architecture and are highly connected, which makes them vulnerable to attacks.

Manufacturers are required to find the right network security solution including network segmentation which can achieve both business intention of productivity improvement and efficient security operation.

Conventional IT network security solutions are not as adaptable as OT requires, in particular when it comes to industrial network protocol support. Existing industrial network security solutions, on the other hand, struggle with centralized management maintenance, as security appliances need to be deployed and maintained individually for hundreds of assets and networks that exist on a shop floor.

“As we face an ever-changing digital landscape, the successful convergence of IT and OT is now critical to business,” said Akihiko Omikawa, executive vice president of IoT security for Trend Micro and chairman of TXOne Networks. “Adding EdgeIPS Pro as an integral part of Trend Micro’s Smart Factory Security Solution is a milestone for protecting large-scale industrial networks on the shop floor. The IT-friendly deployment and management allows organizations to continue running operations while keeping serious threats at bay.”

EdgeIPS Pro is a transparent intent-based industrial intelligent IPS array built with TXOne’s one-pass Deep Packet Inspection (TXODPI) technology, enabling network segmentation capabilities by firewall/IPS/protocol filter capability with deeper and wider industrial network protocol support. There is no need to change network configuration settings of existing assets, further minimizing initial deployment costs. It also enables efficient centralized management for large-scale industrial networks with Gen3 hardware bypass supported 48 or 96 ports and easy-to-deploy IT rack-mount form factor.

“The lack of network segmentation to stop malware propagation is the most common issue in the control network layer and a real challenge for ICS environments as they require deeper and wider industrial network protocol support,” said Dr Terence Liu, General Manager for TXOne Networks. “EdgeIPS Pro allows administrators to organize network segmentation by business intention.” – TradeArabia News Service