SCADA security software provider Industrial Defender this week announced the latest version of its application suite, featuring enhanced firewall support, greater product scalability, and additional intrusion-detection capabilities specific to power substations.

Fresh off its name change from Verano to Industrial Defender, the company announced version 3.0 of its flagship offering, which affords manufacturers and other companies prevention and detection of IT-based threats that can come from hackers, malicious software, employees, partner companies, and others. Industrial Defender includes among its core customers power, energy, transportation, water, and chemicals companies.

In version 3.0 of the system, the company has created a single console that rolls up management of multiple firewalls. Prior versions had allowed for management solely of the company's own technology, but version 3.0 will allow users to monitor firewalls from Cisco and Secure Computing in conjunction with Industrial Defender's.

For manufacturing environments where an array of control system technology is the norm, version 3.0 features greater scalability, including the ability to manage as many as 200 host devices through a single application. This expanded functionality is well-suited to companies that are bringing a new plant online, for instance, or have grown through mergers, said Todd Nicholson, Industrial Defender's chief marketing officer, in an interview today.

And for power companies looking to better secure their substations, the latest Industrial Defender system provides industrial signatures for the IEC 61850 automation protocol, which defines the communications and systems requirements of devices in a substation environment. Recognition of these signatures allows the system to detect illicit activity, including port scans and unauthorized commands to equipment in the substation, the company said.

Existing customers that upgrade to version 3.0 will have the option of using the company's support services to implement the new software. Nicholson said the price of the product depends on how it is configured, but entry-level deployments average $15,000 to $20,000, while complex installments range to hundreds of thousands of dollars and more.

Industrial Defender operates on the presumption that many legacy process control systems do not have adequate layers of IT-based security. In a changing world, where cyber-threats have increased exponentially, the thinking goes, companies with critical assets under their control need a better way to safeguard those assets.

On its Web site, the company keeps a running tally of incidents that point up the need for IT-based security, including a report of an alleged hacker who targeted NASA servers and a recent New York Times story on the looming danger of cyber-warfare among nations.

At the product's core are the Industrial Defender Guard, which supplies perimeter defense to SCADA and control systems, and the Security Event Monitoring (SEM) console, which displays information and threat alerts to the IT infrastructure. The ID Guard appliance includes a firewall, virus prevention, and automatic system lockdown based on preset threat levels. Another module, the Network Intrusion Detection System, catches malware at the network level, while the Host Intrusion Detection System monitors and detects untoward events on host computers at the applications and operating system layer.