This past week OPSWAT attended the Cyber Security Oil and Gas Summit Canada event in Calgary, Alberta. The event brought together security professionals from many of the stakeholders in the Canadian energy industry, including both the energy companies themselves and local and federal law enforcement agencies. Although the need for cyber security in the energy industry is not new, the landscape is always evolving, and there were many discussions on innovative and exciting developments in the industry.
OPSWAT booth at Oil and Gas Summit
One of the major themes brought up at the conference both by speakers and in our discussions with individuals at our booth was the need for security officers to be able to identify the most critical pieces of information out of the flood of data they have on their secure networks. As more systems become interconnected, there is a lot more data available for security officers to utilize in order to monitor their network environments. Although this data can be extremely valuable, an excess of data 'noise' can make it difficult to see the information 'signal'. System administrators are always looking for a way to integrate all of the data to help identify significant trends that need to be investigated.
Another repeated theme that was mentioned both by those in the oil and gas industry as well as by vendors was the need to make the most out of a limited budget. Unfortunately, cyber security is usually viewed as an incremental cost by organizations instead of a critical investment. Companies don't usually change their view of this cost until there has been a security breach. By then, it is usually too late. Because costs are a concern, individuals in charge of security are usually looking to find security solutions that provide the most bang for their buck and help them reduce their cost of ownership.
OPSWAT's MetaDefender product line was very well received at the conference as a way to address both of these recurring themes. MetaDefender allows security administrators to centrally manage all of their data security policies at a single source, checking files for threats no matter what source they come from. MetaDefender and Metascan® allow companies to block threats coming into their organization through email, web traffic, or physical media, and allow customers to handle all of these needs using a single system. A consolidated record of detected threats is maintained so that they can be appropriately investigated and vulnerabilities can be patched before it is too late.
