Digital Gatekeepers: How a New Alliance Shields the Middle East’s Vital Networks
Cybersecurity heavyweights Censys and Rilian join forces to defend the Middle East’s critical infrastructure from a rising tide of digital threats.
Fast Facts
- Censys and Rilian Technologies have partnered to boost cyber defense for national and critical infrastructure in the Middle East.
- The collaboration brings advanced Internet and industrial system intelligence to government and commercial organizations.
- Censys supports tracking and analysis across 26 communication protocols and over 220 industrial system fingerprints.
- Rilian’s AI-driven platform aims to simplify and automate cybersecurity operations for sensitive environments.
- The alliance responds to escalating cyber threats targeting energy, finance, and government sectors in the region.
Guarding the Digital Borders
Imagine the region’s oil pipelines, power grids, and financial networks as a lattice of invisible highways, humming with vital data. Now picture cybercriminals and state-backed hackers probing these arteries for weaknesses, seeking to cause chaos or seize secrets. In the Middle East, where digital and physical infrastructure are tightly intertwined, the stakes could not be higher.
The Players: Censys and Rilian Step Up
Enter Censys, a Michigan-based firm renowned for its sweeping, real-time maps of the Internet’s exposed surfaces. Think of them as the world’s digital cartographers, continuously scanning for open doors and windows in the vast city of connected devices. Their technology uncovers what’s visible on the Internet - servers, industrial control systems, and the hidden fingerprints of operational technology (OT) that keep factories and utilities running.
Rilian Technologies, meanwhile, specializes in AI-powered defense platforms tailored for the unique pressures of sovereign states and critical industries. Their Rilian Defense Platform (RDP) is designed to be the Swiss Army knife for cyber defenders, automating detection, compliance, and decision-making with minimal manual effort.
Why This Matters Now
The Middle East has become a hotspot for high-profile cyberattacks. In 2012, the Shamoon virus crippled Saudi Aramco, wiping out data on tens of thousands of computers. More recently, attacks on water facilities and energy grids globally have shown how vulnerable critical infrastructure can be. According to a 2023 Dragos report, the number of cyber incidents targeting industrial systems worldwide rose by over 140% in just two years.
With nation-state actors and sophisticated criminal groups both in play, defenders need not just walls, but radar - tools that can see, predict, and outmaneuver attacks. That’s where the Censys-Rilian alliance becomes crucial: by marrying Censys’ visibility into the Internet’s nooks and crannies with Rilian’s AI-driven orchestration, they offer a real-time, unified cockpit for those protecting the region’s most sensitive assets.
Reading the Digital Pulse
The partnership brings a treasure trove of historical and live data - over four years’ worth - about which devices are online, what software they’re running, and how they might be exposed. For defenders, it’s like having a time machine and an early warning system rolled into one. The ability to track changes, spot anomalies, and prioritize risks in real time can mean the difference between a minor incident and a catastrophic blackout.
WIKICROOK
- Critical Infrastructure: Critical infrastructure includes key systems - like power, water, and healthcare - whose failure would seriously disrupt society or the economy.
- Operational Technology (OT): Operational Technology (OT) includes computer systems that control industrial equipment and processes, often making them more vulnerable than traditional IT systems.
- Industrial Control Systems (ICS): Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are computerized systems that manage and automate machinery and processes in factories and critical infrastructure.
- Internet: The Internet is a worldwide network connecting computers and servers, enabling global data exchange and communication, but also exposing hosts to cyber risks.
- AI: AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is technology that enables machines to mimic human intelligence, learning from data and improving over time.
