Owl Cyber Defense Solutions, a U.S. manufacturer of hardware-enforced data diode and cross-domain solutions, and Trihedral Engineering Limited, maker of VTScada, announced on Tuesday a technology integration that enables water, wastewater, and other critical infrastructure operators to securely move operational data from isolated Operational Technology (OT) environments into IT systems and the cloud.
Integrating VTScada's SCADA software with Owl's hardware-enforced data diodes, which limit data transfer to one way and eliminate the risk of a return path, provides critical infrastructure operators with a solution that solves one of the most persistent challenges in OT security: getting critical operational data out of the network without opening a path back in that could be exploited by bad actors.
The integrated solution is already deployed at major U.S. municipalities, including the Cities of Houston and Nashville, in water and wastewater environments. Both deployments were completed within the last year, demonstrating rapid adoption.
“By integrating Trihedral's VTScada platform with Owl Cyber Defense data diodes, we were able to support the Cities of Houston and Nashville with a solution that delivers secure, one‑way data replication without increasing cyber risk,†said Blair Sooley, Trihedral Regional Account Manager. “This integration makes it possible to protect critical OT networks while still ensuring operational readiness and providing operators the insights they need to do their jobs effectively.â€
VTScada is certified compliant with IEC 62443-4-1 Maturity Level 3 (ML3), the international standard for secure product development lifecycles in industrial automation, certified by exida. Owl's U.S.-manufactured data diodes are hardware-enforced, protocol-aware, one-way transfer solutions that align with U.S. Government Protocol Filtering Diode (PFD) requirements.
As a PFD, Owl's data diodes enhance the unidirectional nature of a simple diode with protocol filtering at the FPGA level. They also support Zero Trust architectures, NIST 800-82 security frameworks, and the growing number of utilities adopting self-imposed policies to source domestic OT security products.
“OT environments increasingly need to share historical and real-time data and control system insights with IT networks, cloud aggregators and backup systems,†said Scott Orton, CEO, Owl Cyber Defense. “Traditional connectivity methods introduce unacceptable cyber risk. Operators have long sought a more secure approach that also supports disaster recovery, data redundancy and digital twin use cases. By combining their best-in-class OT software with Owl's hardware-enforced data diodes, we're giving utilities a proven, U.S.-made path to secure data mobility without compromising the integrity of their OT or IT networks.â€
Beyond the initial deployment in water and wastewater infrastructure, the partnership extends across the breadth of critical infrastructure that employs SCADA systems.
