Among the most alarming attack vectors that cybercriminals can target are the hardware and software used in industrial settings to monitor and control billions of devices, processes and critical infrastructure. These include control sensors, power generation management, oil & gas refining management, cameras, switches, machinery, and fire systems to cite a few examples. These operational technology (OT) instances are mainly designed to interact with specific equipment, and they don’t always come with sufficient security or update mechanisms built-in to withstand concerted attacks.

Our guest on this episode of the Tech Means Business podcast, Nigel Tan, works for Delinea, a leading Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions provider that can protect this layer of infrastructure, whether new or legacy.

While endpoint protection is often not viable and network-layer security unsuitable, it’s zero-trust and careful PAM that can make the difference between safe OT and an open door for hackers.

Nigel is Delinea’s Technical Director of Sales Engineering at Delinea for the Asia-Pacific, a battle-hardened professional who’s been active in cybersecurity for many years. Together, we discuss the present situation, the potential for damage to critical national infrastructure and worse, the possibility that a cyber incursion can easily damage human lives, physically.

There are ways and means, of course, to ameliorate the situation, which Nigel helps us discover as we check out Delinea’s OT protection methods.

Check out the Delinea website here:
https://delinea.com

Read the company’s blog on security, starting here:
https://delinea.com/blog/privileged-access-management-for-industrial-iot-security

Nigel Tan of Delinea is here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigel-t-bb4bba7/

Joe Green’s LinkedIn profile lives here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/

The post Protecting Operational Technology with zero-trust appeared first on TechWire Asia.

The software-defined WAN (wide area network) is a piece of networking technology that simply makes life easier (and safer) for any organization with a distributed network.

Instead of struggling to join MPLS, ADSL, and other interconnects together and then blanket the whole thing in encryption, SD-WAN handles all the details. Primary among SD-WAN suppliers is Nuage Networks, the SD-WAN specialist division of Nokia.

Our guests in this episode of the Tech Means Business are Saurabh Sandhir, the Vice President and General Manager of Nuage Networks, and Arun Pathak, Vice President of Managed Network and Collaboration Services for NTT. Arun speaks as the enterprise-scale expert in India of SD-WAN technology and software, one that partners with Nuage as its de facto supplier.

We talk about the effects of the cloud on networks, the advantages of SD-WAN, and how this layer of software abstraction increases cybersecurity at the network level.

Learn more about Nuage Networks here:
https://www.nuagenetworks.net/

NTT Global is here:
https://services.global.ntt/

Saurabh Sandhir is on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssandhir/

NTT’s Arun Pathak is here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arun-pathak-4a730a14/

The host of Tech Means Business can be found here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/

The post Defining the Safer, Distributed Business Network appeared first on TechWire Asia.

We talk to Scott Hesford, the Director of Solutions Engineering, Asia Pacific at BeyondTrust, about applying granularity of privileges to multiple users at scale, and keep on top of it all, too. What could be a simple granting of privileges to a subcontractor for a day, can turn into a gaping cybersecurity hole that can bring an organization to its knees. And BeyondTrust is the company that’s here to help!

We talk about implicit zones, movement through the IT stack to get a day’s work done, and NIST’s airplane analogy for cybersecurity: who can get through to the departures lounge, who can board the plane, and (even) where a user can sit Or, in more direct terms, allowing a subcontractor to restart a service without sudo.

It’s all possible, it just needs the right partner; one with the cybersecurity tooling that’s not out of its depth in a multi-cloud, mobile, cloud-heavy environment.

Read more about BeyondTrust here:
https://www.beyondtrust.com/

The NIST zero trust information we refer to is here:
https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-207/final

The US Federal Government directive on Zero Trust can be found here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/M-22-09.pdf

The CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model can be found here:
https://www.cisa.gov/zero-trust-maturity-model

Scott Hesford is on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-hesford/

Joe “economy class” Green is here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/

The post Boarding the Privilege Plane: BeyondTrust in the Clouds appeared first on TechWire Asia.

Show Notes for Series 02 Episode 26

This podcast is produced in conjunction with SUSE
In this episode of the Tech Means Business podcast we look at the edge, and really dig into how it’s best defined and used by organizations. Edge computing environments are often characterized by the prevalence of IoT or IIoT devices, so any discussion about edge usually involves talking about app deployment on smaller, less powerful hardware.

That makes the edge the perfect place for containerized microservices — containers are fast to deploy and lightweight, so if DevOps is going to take advantage of edge’s capabilities, it’s here where folks have to concentrate.

Our guest is Vishal Ghariwala, CTO for APJ and Greater China, from SUSE, who takes us through the edge computing landscape, explains the issues, and talks about how dedicated Edge technologies from SUSE like K3s, Rancher and SLE Micro can be leveraged to best effect. If you’ve ever wondered about how best to develop, deploy, maintain and manage container-based apps and services in edge settings, this podcast has the answers you need.

And while we might think “heavy industry,” e.g. manufacturing, whenever IIoT gets a mention, Vishal also talks about other verticals using these types of technologies to deploy agile apps, and how any deployment will fit into existing structures in the enterprise at large.

Less practically, but a deal more glamorous, we also learn that SUSE’s container tech is being used by batteries of satellites: it’s SUSE in space!

Read more about, SUSE Edge, SLE Micro, K3s and Rancher.

Vishal is here on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishalghariwala/

Elektrobit partnership:

https://www.suse.com/c/new-horizons-for-suse-and-elektrobit-partnership-in-automotive/

Hypergiant success story:

https://www.suse.com/success/hypergiant/

Joe can be found orbiting here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/

The post IIoT and Containers in Edge Environments, with SUSE appeared first on TechWire Asia.