Norman SmartSuite for Manufacturing protects plant and machinery

The trend for manufacturers to move away from proprietary plant and process control systems to standardised IT technologies continues, with vendors and integrators implementing standard hardware, software and communications protocols in order to increase system performance and reduce development costs. This migration has opened up the manufacturing network to increased security risks that are often ignored in the belief that off-the-shelf security products are not suitable for this sensitive environment.

David Robinson, Country Manager for Norman UK, states: "This increased connectivity most certainly has its business advantages. However, the consequences of a security breach - such as the plant floor becoming infected by a worm or Trojan, for example - can be far-reaching and extremely costly. This could include production disruptions, loss of data, health and safety issues, and damage to the company's reputation. Norman SmartSuite for Manufacturing has been designed to offer maximum protection against malware threats without adversely affecting the real-time systems operating in production sites across the globe."

Norman SmartSuite for Manufacturing comprises the following modules:

Norman Network Protection (NNP)

A key component for manufacturing, NNP is a real-time anti-malware scanner and can be installed at various points through the network or between network segments. Key features include:

• Block and exclude options on IP and Mac Address as well as at VLAN-level
• Inbound and outbound stream scanning of Internet and local network connections
• Multiple protocol support including HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, RPC, TFTP, IRC, and CIFS/SMB

Norman SandBox Analyzer

Incorporated within NNP, Norman SandBox Analyzer allows users to analyse automatically the file behaviour and actual actions performed by the suspicious file that has been stopped. This allows for an efficient response to malware infection and reduces downtime for cleanup.

Norman Virus Control

Under the SmartSuite for Manufacturing licence, Norman Virus Control can be installed on desktops, laptops, servers and terminal servers. In addition to covering the majority of the latest operating systems, Norman Virus Control is compatible with older operating systems still commonly deployed in manufacturing, including Windows 98/2000/NT

Norman Malware Cleaner

This utility can be used to detect and clean specific malicious code. The program will effectively clean an infected system completely by killing infected running processes, removing infections from disks (including ActiveX components and browser helper objects), reveal and remove rootkits, restore correct registry values, remove references created by malware and remove Windows firewall rules for malicious programs.

If you are in any doubt as to the level of the threat to manufacturers, read this technical article from Norman.