Honeywell expands OT Cybersecurity Portfolio with Active Defence and Deception Technology Solution

January 13, 2022 1:56 pm

Acalvio is backed by a Honeywell Ventures investment; new product expands Honeywell’s relationship with Acalvio.

Honeywell and Acalvio Technologies announced, the launch of a new solution designed to detect known and unknown (zero-day) attacks across the operational technology (OT) environments in commercial buildings. Honeywell Threat Defence Platform (HTDP) powered by Acalvio® employs sophisticated active defence – featuring autonomous deception tactics to outsmart attackers – and provides high fidelity threat detection. Honeywell’s technology features an approach recommended by governments and cybersecurity standard bodies because of its ability to detect and control attacks.

Traditionally, building OT environments rely on prevention technology and passive detection such as perimeter security and network traffic analysis to secure systems. Yet, more than 1 in 4 (27 percent) surveyed facility managers experienced a cyber breach of their OT systems in the last 12 months, according to a recent survey conducted by Honeywell Building Technologies. Threat actors continue to target building systems with both targeted attacks and ransomware attacks. These attacks can go beyond accessing private customer data and may potentially impair the operations for critical organisations that keep society running such as utilities, data centres, hospitals and airports.

“The quantity and complexity of cyber attacks unfortunately are increasing every day, reinforcing the need for building owners and operators to rigorously monitor, maintain and protect their OT environments,” said Mirel Sehic, global director of cybersecurity, Honeywell Building Technologies. “Incorporating Acalvio’s autonomous deception technology into our OT cybersecurity toolbelt provides a highly effective solution to help protect our customers’ buildings from increasingly sophisticated attacks.”

Powered by Acalvio’s breakthrough deception technology, HTDP incorporates design-, intent- and industry-specific knowledge into a seamless workflow to deploy effective deception across distributed enterprise OT networks. Using specially crafted deception elements, HTDP also helps detect ransomware and even zero-day variants with precision and speed. HTDP uses advanced analytics to confirm and investigate threats.