Johnson Controls Aims to Better Secure Smart Buildings
Johnson Controls has acquired Tempered Networks as part of an effort to better secure its OpenBlue platform for collecting smart building and facilities data. At the same time, Johnson Controls has allied with Accenture to construct two OpenBlue Innovation Centers in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India.
Vijay Sankaran, vice president and CTO for Johnson Controls, said the addition will enable Johnson Controls to leverage the Airwall cloud platform from Tempered Networks that is based on the Host Identity Protocol (HIP).
HIP runs over traditional IP networks but separates the endpoint identifier and locator roles of IP addresses using a Host Identity namespace based on public key security infrastructure. Tempered Networks added a cloud-based policy orchestration platform to enforce policies across encrypted tunnels that are configured to ensure zero-trust network access by default.
That approach essentially creates a micro-segmented network that is invisible to cybercriminals. It also extends existing cybersecurity alliances Johnson Controls formed with Pelion and DigiCert to provide secure device and digital certificate management capabilities, noted Sankaran. The goal is to enable operational technology (OT) teams to ensure data is only exchanged across services that are continuously authenticated, he added.
In the longer term, Johnson Controls will also integrate Tempered Networks with the Foghorn artificial intelligence (AI) platform for managing edge computing environments, noted Sankaran. Johnson Controls acquired Foghorn in January 2022.
Vikrant Viniak, a senior managing director for Accenture, said that while there is a lot of interest in smart buildings to reduce carbon emissions, these facilities depend on network infrastructure to collect data. That makes them potentially high-value targets for cybercriminals. The challenge is with the increased focus on sustainability and the greater availability of wireless 5G networking services, the number of smart buildings being constructed is now steadily rising, he added.
The convergence of physical and digital security has been evolving slowly, but as more security capabilities are overlayed on top of the networks installed in smart buildings it should become easier to achieve. Cybersecurity professionals, for example, should be able to instantly determine that an individual who appears to be remotely accessing applications is, in fact, already in a building. At the same time, it should become easier to prevent data exfiltrated from, for example, an embedded system that controls a critical function within that building.
It’s not clear how much demand there is for brand new buildings given the number of people that now work from home. What is clear is that many existing structures will need to be either retrofitted or replaced if organizations want to achieve their sustainability goals. Unfortunately, right now it’s too easy for cybercriminals to derail those efforts by compromising networks so the need to converge networking and operational security management is becoming more apparent.
The challenge, of course, is not only getting the technology in place to achieve that goal but also bringing together a diverse mix of cybersecurity and OT cultures that, historically, not needed to collaborate as closely as they do today.
