APERIO Systems Emerges from Stealth, Unveils Data Forgery Protection Technology to Defend Critical Industrial Control Systems From Cyber Threats

APERIO Systems Emerges from Stealth, Unveils Data Forgery Protection Technology to Defend Critical Industrial Control Systems From Cyber Threats

"Seeing is NOT always believing": Industrial cybersecurity startup protects SCADA systems by detecting and immediately correcting falsified readings for unprecedented operational resilience

HAIFA, Israel, November 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

    APERIO Systems [http://www.aperio-systems.com ] today emerged from stealth mode,
launching the industry's first technology that detects artificial manipulations of
industrial process data, enabling operators to take real-time corrective action without
service disruption to industrial control systems (ICS). From the rate of gas flow at a
petroleum refinery, to the temperature and spin rates of turbines in a power plant, or the
chlorine level of water supply networks, APERIO Systems' proprietary Data Forgery
Protection(TM) (DFP) technology delivers the last line of defense in protecting critical
SCADA systems against insider and external threats.

    APERIO Systems, already deployed at several sites across EMEA, secured seed funding
from a consortium of private investors, including prominent cybersecurity veterans Doron
Bergerbest-Eilon, Liran Tancman, and Shlomi Boutnaru. Bergerbest-Eilon is renowned for his
role in establishing the agency charged with protecting all critical infrastructure in the
State of Israel and is the former director of the security and protection division of the
Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is currently the founder, president and CEO of ASERO
Worldwide, a security consulting firm. Tancman and Boutnaru, who played key roles in
building Israel's cybersecurity capabilities, founded predictive cybersecurity startup
CyActive, which was acquired by PayPal in 2015.

    "Current solutions focus on keeping hackers outside critical systems, but attacks like
the one that took down the power grid in Ukraine clearly show that sophisticated attackers
will eventually penetrate these systems," said Bergerbest-Eilon. "Once attackers breach a
system, they must blind the operators and protection mechanisms by falsifying data in
order to inflict severe and long-lasting damage. This entirely new category of Data
Forgery Protection (DFP) is the key to keeping our critical infrastructure safe from
attacks."

    Industrial control systems (ICS) are generally outdated from a cybersecurity
perspective, vulnerable and difficult to patch because mission critical systems cannot be
taken offline. While the threat to ICS is growing, critical systems security products on
the market today are intrusive, hard to maintain, costly to integrate, and often produce
vague and unactionable alerts, which cannot be acted upon by critical utility control
rooms.

    "Think of APERIO Systems as a polygraph for process data - it detects when your system
is lying to you," said Yevgeni Nogin, CEO of APERIO Systems. "With the unrelenting
tenacity of cybercriminals, critical infrastructure breaches are inevitable. By
guaranteeing the authenticity and integrity of operational data, APERIO Systems ensures
that operators always know what's really going on, enabling them to react quickly to a
breach and take corrective action - making the critical systems resilient to the most
dangerous of attacks."

    APERIO Systems' advanced proprietary algorithms search for the data's unique
fingerprints and validate its authenticity. Any mismatches generate an alert and APERIO
Systems pinpoints the attacked equipment and forged process data. Using a sophisticated
combination of physics and state-of-the-art machine learning techniques, APERIO Systems
reconstructs the real values of the forged operational data and reverts it to its original
state in real time - establishing unprecedented operational resilience.

    How APERIO Systems Protects Critical Infrastructure Control Systems 

    Both internal and external attackers can penetrate the most critical infrastructures,
causing severe and long lasting damage. In order to do so, they must hide their malicious
activity and deceive plant operators by forging the reported values of critical devices
- remaining undetected and preventing timely corrective action. APERIO Systems' Data
Forgery Protection technology immediately exposes forged system readings to safeguard
critical control systems and allow quick and effective remediation.

    APERIO Systems provides:

    - Data Forgery Protection (DFP):

    Validates integrity and authenticity of reported signals to provide operators with
true state awareness, enabling them to take corrective action in real time.

    - Process Continuity: 

    Enables trust in the most critical data and provides resilience when attacked.

    - Operational Alerts:

    Fast, actionable, specific and accurate alerts integrate cybersecurity into
operational emergency procedures, allowing operators to mitigate permanent damage.

    - Accurate and Relevant: 

    Alerts operators only when the reported process state does not reflect the plant's
real situation - providing an extremely low false alert rate.

    - Minimized Risk: 

    Passive and non-intrusive system minimizes operational risks, as well as installation
and maintenance costs.

    -Counters Insider Threats: 

    Protects the plant's process continuity from both external and internal actors.

    APERIO Systems is led by a veteran executive team with roots in the elite units of the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as well as top cybersecurity and industrial companies:

    - Yevgeni Nogin, CEO - a graduate of the elite "Talpiot" IDF military academy served
over nine years in elite intelligence and R&D units of the IDF, and brings expertise in
SCADA systems security.

    - Michael Shalyt, VP Product - a graduate of the "Psagot" IDF academic program and
served as leading researcher and team leader in the elite 8200 unit. Prior to joining
APERIO Systems, he led the malware research team at Check Point.

    - Itay Baruchi, Head of Algorithms -  served as director of Industrial MRI, where he
worked closely with several of the biggest oil and gas drilling companies. Before that, he
founded and served as CTO of Pythagoras Solar.

    - Charles Tresser, Chief Scientific Officer -  a world renowned expert in dynamical
systems. Tresser is one of the world's leading experts in chaos theory and formerly
Director of Research at IBM and France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). 

    About Aperio Systems 

    APERIO Systems secures critical control systems with a last line of defense against
both internal and external cyber threats and malicious actors. APERIO Systems uses
statistical physics and state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to detect operational
data forgery attempts and reconstruct the true state of industrial control systems in real
time. APERIO Systems enables unprecedented resilience and operational integrity for
critical infrastructure such as power plants, water and waste control, manufacturing, oil
and gas, energy, transportation, pharma, and food and beverage. More information
at http://www.aperio-systems.com

       
         
        Media Contact: 
        Leron Kornreich 
        Silicon Valley Communications 
        leron@siliconvpr.com 
        +1-415-937-1724 

     

Aperio Systems