Tempered Networks –Managing Cyber Risk with new technology that fixes the fatal flaw

The Silicon Review

Cyber risk is everyone’s problem. In the first six months of this year, 4.1 billion records were breached. 38% of office buildings have been breached.As billions of OT devices without built-in cybersecurity are connected to IT networks, they are creating a massive and rapidly growing attack surface by offering remote control of critical, physical infrastructure. This exponential increase in new attack vectors didn’t exist when today’s security solutions were being designed. The result is rapidly raising cost and complexity and a precipitous decline in protection.

Tempered is a cyber-risk management company whicheliminates catastrophic cyber risks with a solution that fixes the fatal flaw and is purpose-built for IIoT to eliminate remote attacks, including lateral attacks that easily evade firewalls. Its Airwall™ eliminates costly, complex network upgrades and firewall OPEX cash burn, and accelerates digital transformation.

What is an Airwall™ and How Does It Work?

The Airwall architecture incorporates a fully encrypted network fabric made up of Airwall edge services and their connected devices, managed through an orchestration engine, called the Airwall Conductor. Unlike traditional IP networking and SDN approaches, the Airwall is a true overlay requiring little to no modification of the underlying network or security infrastructure. It provides a simple policy-based configuration of devices or groups of devices that are explicitly trusted within the Airwall as an overlay network based on whitelisting. This trust, based on a unique cryptographic identity, or (CID) for each device, determines what systems or devices can initiate and establish communication before any data is exchanged.

Building an Airwall requires a minimum of three components, an Airwall Conductor, and two or more hardware or software appliances, which we collectively call Airwall edge services. These can be deployed symmetrically either in a hub and spoke topology, mesh, or both. Below is a short description of each.

Capabilities

Cloak IIoT infrastructure: “hackers can’t hack what they can’t see”
Eliminate lateral movement and malware propagation
Unify security policy across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure
Authenticate and encrypt every connection, based on a trusted identity

Benefits

Reduce downtime of physical infrastructure
Extend the useful life of IT and Security systems, such as firewalls, security scanners, and proxies
Dramatically reduce the attack surface across an entire network
Deploy and manage less expensively than competing legacy solutions

Products furnished by Tempered that are unique

The Airwall™ Conductor

Airwall Conductor is the orchestration engine that manages policy for all distributed Airwall edge services, delivering effortless control of the network. It defines what overlay network segments and systems protected machines are allowed to access, as well as how they connect on the LAN, WAN, and public Internet. Policy creation and management is point-and-click simple and requires no advanced training. Available in both software and hardware appliance form factors, the Conductor enables fast network provisioning, micro-segmentation, and secure connectivity based on unchanging cryptographic machine identities, not network addresses that change and are spoof able.

The Airwall™ relay

The Airwall relay routes encrypted edge service connections across all networks and transport options, without modifying the underlying network. Secure end-to-end connectivity is now simple whether you have a Layer 2, Layer 3, or bridged L2/L3 network using Ethernet, Wi-Fi, cellular, MPLS, or radio. The Airwall relay allows the WAN and Internet to behave like one local broadcast domain, making WAN micro-segmentation a reality.

Airwall™ server

The Airwall server is an identity-defined perimeter for Linux and Microsoft servers that enable simple access and segmentation. Serving as the network boundary and security perimeter for its protected workload, the Airwall server can be deployed with little or no changes to existing infrastructure and eliminates the complexity associated with a traditionally separate network and security controls.

A workload protected by an Airwall server can be cloaked and made undiscoverable by unauthorized systems. Server access is now restricted to only other authenticated and authorized Airwall edge services connecting from any network, significantly reducing the network attack surface.

The stalwart behind the glory of Tempered Networks

Jeff Hussey is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Tempered Networks, the pioneer of the Airwall. As an accomplished entrepreneur and business leader with a proven track record in the networking and security markets, Hussey also founded F5 Networks, the global leader in application delivery and an S&P500 listed company. He maintains numerous board positions across a variety of technology, non-profit and philanthropic organizations. Currently, Hussey is the chairman of the board for Carena and chairman and co-owner of Ecofiltro and PuraVida Create Good. Hussey also serves on the board for Webaroo and the Seattle Symphony. He was the chairman of the board for Lockdown Networks, which was sold to McAfee in 2008. Hussey received a BA in Finance from SPU and an MBA from the University of Washington.