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ABB Ability™ Cyber Security Application Allowlisting

Fortify your industrial control system

If you have deployed the essential security controls such as Security Updates and Malware Protection but still need more robust defense, consider ABB Ability™ Cyber Security Application Allowlisting. 

Application allowlisting only permits pre-approved applications to run on the computers in a system. In theory this will prevent any code from executing which is not explicitly authorized, aka part of the allowlist. 

ABB Ability™ Cyber Security Application Allowlisting is deployed and configured by our Industrial Cyber Security Experts on your ABB DCS system. By using validated software and configurations, ABB can provide the benefits of allowlisting without affecting system availability.

Our Industrial Cyber Security Experts works with you to create a custom allowlist that meets your operational needs and is flexible to adapt to modifications and unique deployments of your DCS.

Features and Benefits

  1. Quick and safe deployment by experts for minimal impact on production
  2. Augment existing security controls to limit insider- and zero-day attacks
  3. Mitigate risk associated with delaying security patch deployment due to longer production cycles

Application Allowlisting should be viewed as an additional security control that works in unison with foundational controls like Security Updates and Malware Protection.

0-Day Security Threats

When a vulnerability in a computing system is first discovered, it is considered to be classed as 0-Day. This means that there is no countermeasure available. Typically, the countermeasure would be a security patch, or virus scan update.

During the time that the vulnerability is first detected to the time that the computing system can be modified to protect against the threat, the system is at risk.
Traditional blacklisting (antivirus solutions) is not able to protect a system from 0-Day threats because the executables are simply not marked as malicious.

When e.g. a hacker or malware adds a file to the computer and executes it, the whitelisting will prevent the execution. In this way, the system is protected against 0-Day threats.

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Additional security controls

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