Waterfall receives U.S. patent for SCADA solution

Published 8 February 2010

SCADA, or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, is used, among other things, to monitor and control the U.S. critical infrastructure assets and facilities; Waterfall receives a patent for unidirectional security gateways to be used in SCADA

Waterfall Security Solutions Ltd., a provider of unidirectional security gateways for SCADA systems, announced that on 19 January it has been granted U.S. patent No. 7,649,452 for its SCADA industrial network security technology.

SCADA, or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, is an industrial control system which is used for monitoring and controlling industrial process. It is used, among other things, to monitor and control the U.S. critical infrastructure assets and facilities. According to Waterfall Security Solutions, its products have been deployed in many critical U.S. infrastructures, homeland security agencies, and mission-critical environments in different continents.

TMCnet.com’s Jayashree Adkoli writes that the company’s unidirectional security gateways include integration with customer’s existing infrastructure, such as SCADA and industrial applications and protocols.

The patent, entitled “Protection of control networks using a one-way link,” strengthens the company’s intellectual property portfolio of technology and solutions for the critical infrastructure and utilities’ markets. “We are expanding our installed-base in North America and are providing more power plants, substations, pipelines, and other critical industrial networks, the ability to securely connect to external networks.” Lior Frenkel, cofounder and CEO of Waterfall Security Solutions, said. “This patent, combined with other filed patents and intellectual property, allows us to provide our customers with the ultimate security solution.”

The company’s One-Way SCADA protocol is utilized as a unidirectional gateway that facilitates extraction and export of messages, data, and information from within industrial networks to external networks. This allows reuse of HMI displays and reporting services, within external or public networks, without the risk to command and control, Waterfall said.

The company offers security solutions for many industrial applications such as the OSIsoft PI Historian, GE Proficy Historian, the Siemens (News-Alert) WinTS, and the GE OSM remote monitoring platforms.

The company says that its cybersecurity solutions allow utilities and critical infrastructures easily to attain compliance with regulations such as NERC-CIP, NRC, NIST, and more.

Waterfall counts among its customers power generation plants, oil and gas companies, T&D’s, refineries, and other utilities and industrial facilities.