A Utility Company’s Barriers to Successful Network Oversight

by Christian Wiens on January 12, 2021

The following is an excerpt from our recent use case, “Why A Large US Utility Company Turned to MixMode to Address Utility Grid Vulnerabilities.”

Barriers to Successful Network Oversight

The only truly workable network solution must bridge the inherent gaps that exist throughout [infrastructure] systems. It must also be capable enough to root out hidden vulnerabilities ripe for hacking.

Customers that approach MixMode at this stage have undoubtedly tried other network security solutions over the years, in particular standalone SIEM products, with varying levels of success.

Perhaps most frustrating to this large utility company is that their network security wishlist is not focused on lofty, unattainable goals. The problem is not that the customer is asking for too much. The problem is that their SIEM products are not capable of achieving simple fundamental tasks on their own, even with expensive add-ons.

Organizations operating these complex, decentralized systems stand to reap big benefits from a solution that adds centralization without disturbing their distributed needs. Rather than going through the large task of adapting their systems to a network security solution, they need a solution that meets them where they are.

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The Solution

The utility company was not satisfied with the typical vendor approach that urged them to simply trust the output of the capabilities of their platforms. The platforms had been pre-configured and pre-tuned by the vendors themselves. They were unsatisfied with the pre-delivered dashboards and pre-delivered analytics that would require additional work toward validation.

In a way, the outcome would be a “watcher of watchers” approach, and still not deliver the necessary level of oversight. They would need to embark on a multi-step validation process in order to achieve information they could glean from MixMode with a limited time investment:

Validate the output of the AI
Demonstrate how the AI operates
Demonstrate the AI’s ability to be turned on or off by the operator for comparative purposes
Provide full forensic search and investigative capabilities of network traffic and log details

Continue reading our newest use case, “Why a Large US Utility Company Turned to MixMode to Address Utility Grid Vulnerabilities,” to learn how the utility company determined that MixMode provided a far greater level of visibility and granularity to both the network and security teams while decreasing the traffic flow to their SIEM system.