SynSaber announces closed beta of palm-sized threat sensors for industrial asset security

SynSaber announced the launch of a closed beta for the industrial community’s palm-sized threat sensors, called “Sabers”. The nimble, small form factor platform is deployable in numerous ways and is performant on the ultra-small DIN rail-sized hardware that is utilized throughout the operating community.

Organizations within the energy, utilities, manufacturing, and oil and gas industries are now able to join the closed beta program, which will grant them early access to the Saber technology and an opportunity to help shape the future of industrial security.

“Industrial organizations that are struggling with ICS/OT visibility within their existing environment will see immense benefit from participating in the beta,” said Ron Fabela, SynSaber CTO and co-founder. “With our full product launch scheduled for early 2022, we encourage organizations to enroll in the beta program now, so they have an opportunity to influence development and shape the product in a way that works best for the specific use cases within today’s complex industrial environments.”

Features included in the beta release:

• Flexible pipeline: The platform is an advanced and innovative solution that allows dynamic reconfiguration and scales from largest deployments down to agent-like instances – all from a single codebase.
• Single codebase: SynSaber has developed the foundation within the beta release to support nearly any OT visibility use case imaginable. The pipeline is ready for each unique use case by offering scalable analytics, flexible deployments, and direct packet capture processing.

From remote substations to global manufacturing, every industrial control system (ICS) environment requires full operational technology (OT) visibility to operate securely. SynSaber’s vendor-agnostic software will fit anywhere within any ICS environment and send data to any collection point.

By offering flexible and scalable collection and analysis for OT security programs, SynSaber covers the gaps left by current offerings within the existing landscape. Some pertinent use cases for SynSaber software include:

• Asset identification & profiling
• Threat detection
• Full packet captures
• Delivery to one or many systems
• Operational monitoring

A current beta participant (senior analyst for a U.S.-based energy utility) recently shared what prompted them to join the SynSaber beta: “Many facilities have critical networks out in remote locations away from the control room and operators, and we frequently don’t have extra fiber to use in those locations that would typically be required for other solutions. With SynSaber, we hope to deploy a small device that will enable monitoring of those remote locations.”

The analyst also indicated that due to their size, they have a small security operation center (SOC) with individuals dedicated to cybersecurity, but that the vast majority of utilities and co-ops do not have the same resources. “We have a responsibility to help co-ops and smaller utilities by finding solutions that will enable them to implement simple and effective solutions for cybersecurity monitoring. I think every medium to large utility should engage with vendors through beta participation or other methods to encourage progress in this space.”