Akamai and NVIDIA develop OT security solution

Akamai has collaborated with NVIDIA to develop a solution for providing zero trust segmentation capabilities for operational technology and industrial control systems.

The solution integrates Akamai’s Guardicore Segmentation solution with NVIDIA BlueField data processing units, with the aim of providing protection for vital systems used by utilities and other critical infrastructure providers. Organisations will be able to implement the hardware-isolated, agentless security approach to help align with evolving regulatory requirements and lower their risk profile while obtaining cyber insurance.

Eliminating the need to rely on software agents will enable the use of the solution by specialised controllers used in water plants, power grids and factories, many of which are too old or delicate to run additional software.

User-configurable security processes are offloaded from the host system to the NVIDIA BlueField DPU, enabling deep visibility across systems, networks and applications without disrupting operations. Users are also able to lock down sensitive industrial equipment without impacting system performance or operational uptime.

The solution is also able to help security teams identify anomalous network connections and indicators of compromise.

Akamai VP of enterprise security Ofer Wolf said the solution has been designed with performance at top of mind.

“Whether you are running a water plant or a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster, your priority is keeping the system moving at full speed. You can’t afford to let security software tax your performance,” he said. “In the past, these environments were extremely difficult to secure because the machines could not handle the overhead of traditional tools without risking a crash or slowing down vital calculations. Akamai and NVIDIA are changing that. By offloading segmentation and observability to the DPU, we’re giving organisations a way to stop attacks in their tracks while maximising CPU power for the heavy lifting it was meant to do.”

Image credit: iStock.com/Traitov