Cybersecurity company Dragos has acquired Network Perception, makers of NP-View. The acquisition will add advanced network visibility, compliance, and segmentation capabilities to the Dragos platform.
“The acquisition of Network Perception represents a significant milestone toward our shared mission to secure the world’s industrial and critical infrastructure,” said Dragos Co-founder and CEO Robert M. Lee.
With cyber threats to industrial networks continuing to evolve, Drago says attaining complete OT network visibility is essential. By bringing together the capabilities of their platform with those of NP-View, organisations will gain an understanding of their networks that was previously elusive. They will now see which assets are connecting to which services in their critical networks, as well as which assets can connect to which services.
Following the upcoming integration, the Dragos Platform and NP-View will deliver dual-layer visibility into OT environments by revealing real-time connections and potential pathways in a cohesive view. This will allow security teams to proactively defend against normally invisible risks and, for the first time, fully map the intent versus reality of their network configurations, identifying key vulnerabilities along the attack path before they can be exploited.
NP-View is used by organisations in the energy, utilities, and industrial sectors to proactively assess, visualise, and monitor their network security posture in an offline manner with no risk to operations. NP-View takes a non-invasive approach by accessing or uploading configuration files for switches, routers, and firewalls. It provides a network topology map, analyses access paths, and evaluates firewall rules. It dramatically simplifies the task of analysing access risk, validating network segmentation, and auditing network designs.
In the future, through the integration of NP-View’s topology and firewall rules analysis into the Dragos Platform, customers will be able to map their OT environment network topology more effectively, decide where to place Dragos Platform network sensors, map vulnerabilities to attack paths and evaluate configuration and policy drift. The dual-layer visibility into what assets are communicating and what communication paths are possible will be a powerful security and compliance view of the OT environment. NP-View’s network segmentation capabilities will enhance Dragos’s strong defence mechanisms against lateral movement by adversaries within OT environments.
“Our companies have grown side-by-side with complementary technologies to protect OT environments,” added Lee. “This acquisition brings our teams and technologies together to give organisations unprecedented visibility into their OT environments. Network Perception’s compliance capabilities expand Dragos’s already strong foundation for helping organisations meet regulations.”
While both companies already have a strong presence in the North American Electric sector, the acquisition allows Dragos to bring Network Perception’s capabilities to its customers in oil and gas, manufacturing, and other industries globally.
Additionally, Dragos customers in the US electric sector can benefit from NP-View’s ability to save time and resources in assessing and managing compliance with the network access requirements of CIP-003 and CIP-005. NP-View is used by NERC auditors to conduct compliance audits, reflecting a high standard in network visibility and compliance management.
Network Perception’s solution supports continuous compliance checks and evidence documentation for NERC-CIP and TSA standards, drastically reducing the time and resources needed for network audits and documentation. NP-View also provides the building blocks to support multiple compliance frameworks, including IEC 62443, further enhancing compliance strength for customers.
“Joining forces with Dragos allows us to combine our strengths and deliver even greater value to the OT community,” said Network Perception’s Co-founder and CEO Robin Berthier. “We are excited to combine our teams, which include some of the brightest minds in industrial cybersecurity, to accelerate innovation and help customers defend against threats and meet regulatory requirements today and tomorrow.”
