CTD at Sea: An Oil & Gas Industry Success Story

With the need to oversee remote vessels far out at sea, this question weighed heavily on the minds of the world-class IT and OT personnel at BW Offshore. BW needed a solution that can interpret unusual maritime protocols, operate effectively via incredibly low bandwidth satellite connection, and secure the connected devices on board their fleet of floating production storage and offloading vessels (FPSOs).

Claroty's Continuous Threat Detection (CTD)

BW Offshore needed a partner who could understand the unique needs of their OT environments. One such environment, BW Catcher, operates roughly 100 miles east of Aberdeen in the notoriously difficult conditions of the North Sea. A marvel of modern engineering, BW Catcher has the capacity to process 60,000 barrels of oil a day and store 650,000 barrels on board. The potential cost of even one day of lost productivity is upwards of $6m, based on the market rate for crude oil at the time of writing. Suffice to say, BW Offshore has ample motivation to ensure operations on board the Catcher are not disrupted.

The results of an internal cybersecurity review—and the need to comply with government regulations—led to an extensive search for an OT security solution. This decision was not taken lightly, and many solutions were considered, tested, and weighed against each other in an effort to ensure the security of BW Catcher was in safe hands. The deciding factors in the eventual decision were:

• Comprehensive visibility and security for all connected devices on board BW Catcher

• Autonomy and control over the application of the solution

• Scalability beyond just BW Catcher, with a long-term goal of having “one dashboard to monitor all of our vessels”

With Claroty, BW Offshore found not just a solution, but also a partner in their OT security journey.

“Clearly this is something that works, and it brings value to us to see where we are exposed.” — Enrico Piccini, Discipline Manager, Instrument and Telecom