Waterfall/Area 81 Racing Team Zips Through Another Successful Season

Waterfall Security Solutions is a proud sponsor of the Area 81 Racing Team, which had another successful year of races across the USA in 2014. Area 81 Racing Team drivers and crew members competed in five states with races at Road Atlanta, New Jersey Motorsports Park (NJMP), Virginia International Raceway, Carolina Motorsports Park, Roebling Road Raceway and Daytona International Speedway. They compete also in the South Atlantic Road Racing Championship (SARRC), the F1000 Championship Series and the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Majors. Here are some highlights from their exciting season.

Tim Pierce in car #18 earned podium finishes in seven SARRC races, including five race wins. He had a tense back and forth battle, jockeying for second through fourth positions in the F1000 Championship Series, having earned multiple top 10 finishes. It came down to the final race, where Tim placed second. Tim also fought to the second step of the podium in Daytona, as well as two fourth place finishes in SCCA Majors events at NJMP. Ultimately, it was a massive turnaround for the driver, who sat on the sidelines as a spectator for the first three races due to back-to-back blown motors.

Richard Franklin in car #81 locked in six podium finishes in SARRC races, including four SARRC race wins. He was also in the running for the SARRC F1000 Championship, where he had racked up several top 10 finishes, until the final laps at Daytona. Still, Richard walked away with a respectable sixth place finish. Richard earned the third place podium spot at the Road Atlanta SCCA Major event. This year marked several significant enhancements to the reliability of Richard’s Stohr F1000. Investments were made in spare bodywork and additional engine development. Amuch publicized (an extremely fun) visit to the high-tech A2 Wind Tunnel in Mooresville, North Carolina and collected valuable aerodynamic data.

Keep an eye on this blog for news on the 2015 racing season. Highlights will include racing the high banks of Daytona International Speedway during the 52nd Annual SCCA Runoffs. Visit www.Area81Racing.com, Facebook or YouTube for additional updates.

Check out previous blog posts on the Waterfall/Area 81 Racing team’s 2014 season:
- Waterfall/Area 81 Racing Takes SARRC F1000 Championship in Daytona
- Waterfall/Area 81 Racing Team Podiums Twice at Goblins GoDouble SARRC

Join us for a breakfast workshop on Thursday, March 26

For those of you attending Cybertech Israel this week, please consider extending your networking and learning to join us for a breakfast workshop we’re hosting on Thursday, March 26 at 9:00 a.m. at the Renaissance Hotel in Tel Aviv.

The workshop will feature interactive presentations from key figures within the cybersecurity world, among them Dimitry Shvartsman, director of technical intelligence for SenseCy, and Gil Litichever, CTO for Arilou Information Security Technologies.

In addition, we will demonstrate our latest technology for enabling safe IT/OT integration within critical infrastructures.

We expect a lively discussion and a delicious breakfast. If you want to get more details on this event, please contact: Amir Grovais at amirg@waterfall-security.com

We hope to see you on Thursday.

February news roundup: Threats from around the world are increasing

There was no shortage of critical infrastructure and cybersecurity in February’s news. Threats from around the world are increasing, and U.S. gas pumps are becoming vulnerable to hackers. Additionally, President Obama’s administration is adding new laws and regulations for cybersecurity to protect critical infrastructure further. Read about these news stories and more in this month’s news roundup:

Russian Cyber Threat more Severe than Previously Assessed
United States intelligence chief delivered his annual assessment by intelligence agencies of the top dangers facing the country on Feb. 26. Following the trend of recent years, cyberattacks were listed as the top danger to U.S. national security, even more dangerous than terrorism. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are top threats to the United States. James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, speculated that Russian cyber threats are among the most severe.

U.S. gas pump hacked with 'Anonymous' tagline
Evidence was found that at least one U.S. internet-facing gas pump was hacked by the group Anonymous. This was shown in a report by Trend Micro, which indicated that this type of hack is strictly an American issue because more than 98 percent of internet-facing gas pumps are located in the U.S. While this hack only resulted in a name change of the gas pump, real world implications will emerge from future hacks of this kind.

U.S. Government Pushes Companies to Address Cyberthreats
The Obama administration is pushing for companies to address the growing threats of cyberattacks, to supplement the laws and regulations that are being put into place. It hopes that private companies can help to take the lead because, as President Obama said, the government cannot address the threat alone. As part of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, defense contractors must quickly make known when they experience a breach. In a speech on cybersecurity, Obama said, “This has to be a shared mission. So many  of our computer networks and critical infrastructure are in the private sector, which means the government cannot do this alone.”

What the Sony Attack Teaches Us About Security Convergence - Lessons for the PowerIndustry on Securing Critical Infrastructure
The hacking of Sony Pictures was a major cyberattack; however, it wasn’t even close to the worst-case scenario. Cyberattacks to critical infrastructure can cause injury, chaos or even death. Similar to the Sony incident though, the hacks are caused by a blend of cyber and physical attacks and ICS attacks. The solution for this is convergence of security.

Strengthening Cyber Risk Management
In a blog post, White House cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel wrote about how the government is focusing on streamlining cybersecurity regulations. New cybersecurity framework released early last year showed incentives to push industries to follow the standards. Later in the year, Daniel announced that the government would focus on eight recommendations; in this blog post, he identifies three as the most promising. Among these three areas are cyber research and development. He said that the Homeland Security Department is working with the critical infrastructure community to get a better idea of their end-goals.

Do you want to check out more industrial security industry news? Check out our January news round up.

Continued recognition

Waterfall Security Solutions continues to be recognized for our industry innovation and expertise. Most recently, we were included on Cybersecurity Ventures’“Cybersecurity 500” list, a directory of the 500 hottest and most innovative cybersecurity companies to watch in 2015. According to Steve Morgan, founder and CEO of Cybersecurity Ventures, “We selected thousands of potential companies for inclusion in the Cybersecurity 500, by soliciting feedback from CISOs and end-user security practitioners, researching hundreds of cybersecurity events on the Cybersecurity Calendar, and researching dozens of Cybersecurity news sources that we follow.”

In addition to the Cybersecurity 500, we were also included on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™EMEA 2014 list, as well as the Israel Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list.

These nominations underscore our continued company growth and notable implementations in the market. We celebrate all of these rankings and applaud our hardworking, innovative team as we usher in another successful year.

What’s next? We’ll keep you posted on what’s next for us here and on our Facebook page.  

March 5th - Joint webinar with KuppingerCole: Unique challenges of protecting OT networks and non-critical infrastructures

We are pleased to offer a webinar that Waterfall is presenting together with leading industry analysts KuppingerCole. The webinar takes place this Thursday 5^th March and will focus on the common problems and unique challenges of protecting operational technology (OT) networks in critical and non-critical infrastructures.

In the first part of the webinar, Marin Kuppinger, founder and principal analyst, and Alexei Balaganski, senior analyst at KuppingerCole, will examine the field of industrial network security and explore security challenges that the industry faces. They will also discuss how trends in IT are shaping industrial security solutions and highlight the possibility of convergence between traditional and industrial network security.

The second part of the webinar will feature insights into industrial security challenges not addressed by traditional IT security products. The difference between IT systems and control systems is control. The consequences of bad control are unacceptable. We can’t “back up” a boiler, or a transformer. Control systems are targets every day. Best practices are evolving.

Tune in to learn:

1. What makes industrial control systems (ICS) so difficult to secure;

2. How IT cyber security is similar to and different from OT cyber security; and

3. Why hardware-enforced protection is essential.

The webinar, “Common Problems and Unique Challenges of Protecting OT networks in Critical and Non-Critical Infrastructures,” takes place on March 5^th at 4:00 p.m. CET, 10:00 a.m. EST, 7:00 a.m. PST.

Register here for the Challenges of protecting OT networks in Critical and Non-Critical Infrastructures and continue to check out Waterfall Security Solutions on Facebook for company updates.