Honeywell and Acalvio Technologies announced the launch of a new solution designed to detect known and unknown attacks across the operational technology (OT) environments in commercial buildings.
Honeywell Threat Defense Platform (HTDP) powered by Acalvio employs “active defense” and provides high fidelity threat detection, the company says. Honeywell also noted that this technology features an approach recommended by governments and cybersecurity standard bodies because of its ability to detect and control attacks.
Traditionally, building OT environments rely on prevention technology and passive detection such as perimeter security and network traffic analysis to secure systems.
Honeywell said that threat actors continue to target building systems with both targeted attacks and ransomware attacks. These attacks can go beyond accessing private customer data and may potentially impair the operations for critical organizations that keep society running such as utilities, data centers, hospitals and airports.
HTDP uses deception tactics to confuse and mislead threats away from critical assets and devices, resulting in low false alerts and a high rate of detection, according to the company. The solution leads threat actors to decoy assets, which appear to be valuable OT and IT devices; however, none of the devices are real and there is no access to the enterprise assets.
“The quantity and complexity of cyberattacks unfortunately are increasing every day, reinforcing the need for building owners and operators to rigorously monitor, maintain and protect their OT environments,” said Mirel Sehic, global director of cybersecurity, Honeywell Building Technologies. “Incorporating Acalvio’s autonomous deception technology into our OT cybersecurity toolbelt provides a highly effective solution to help protect our customers’ buildings from increasingly sophisticated attacks.”
Using specially crafted deception elements, HTDP also helps detect ransomware and even zero-day variants with precision and speed. HTDP uses advanced analytics to confirm and investigate threats, Honeywell said.
“We’re excited to work with Honeywell to secure and keep building OT systems properly operating while also protecting the people and data throughout an organization,” said Ram Varadarajan, co-founder and CEO, Acalvio Technologies. “Importantly, this technology is something that can benefit every building and facility – especially those that do not have teams of cyber experts. It requires no prior knowledge of attacker tactics and can be deployed without special training or modifications to existing OT environments.”
The company also highlighted that the HTDP solution includes deployment and ongoing monitoring, while advanced artificial intelligence makes the service easy to use and scalable. HTDP can be deployed across both IT and OT environments as either an on-premises offering or cloud service.
Honeywell’s relationship with Acalvio includes investment by Honeywell Ventures to further support the development of the latest cybersecurity solutions and technologies.
