Byres sells SCADA businesses

Vocal information security critic and SCADA expert Eric Byres has sold his business Byres Security Inc to telecommunications provider Belden for an undisclosed sum.

Byres Security and the hardware division Tofino Security will operate as independent business units under the Belden umbrella. The husband and wife founders will stay on, Joann Byers as general manager and vice-president and Eric Byres as chief technology officer and engineering vice-president.

Eric Byres, pictured, who lashed vendor Siemens over its high-profile Stuxnet security lapses, said he will continue to develop standards for supervisory control and data acquisition systems that manage inustrial appliances such as power stations, telcos and utilities.

"We are committed to developing the business for many years," Byres said. "Our experienced team remains intact."

The company was sold to expand the market for its solutions, he said.

"Existing Tofino Security product lines will be actively developed, sold and supported. Red and blue Tofino security appliances are going to continue to appear in factories and plants around the world, only in more shapes and sizes."

He said research and development spending will increase while Tofino will be incorporated into Belden’s industrial networking and automation products.

Belden and Tofino shared hardware technology, a "good synergy between the companies’ technologies and capabilities", he said.

He thanked the writers of the Stuxnet worm that infiltrated nuclear reactors and shut down Iran's nuclear weapons programme. "The positive side of Stuxnet is that awareness and action about industrial-control system and SCADA security has increased dramatically since it was discovered."