Kuwait Oil Company secures network with Cisco system

Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) and Cisco have formed a new partnership to provide the oil company with network security improvements.

KOC has installed one of Cisco's network admission control systems to consolidate the management of its network to a single point. Through one system, KOC will manage security and access to its network using in-band or out-of-band deployment options, user authentication tools and filtering controls for bandwidth and traffic.

"The number of devices and applications accessing Kuwait Oil Company's network both inside and outside our firewall has been steadily growing, thereby creating more attack vectors for hackers to exploit," KOC Senior Engineer Telecommunications Abdulsalam Al-Matrouk said. "Cisco's broad set of solutions covering the broadest set of attack vectors, leveraging both global and local intelligence, met our company needs perfectly. Cyber attacks are getting increasingly sophisticated and discreet and are driven by financial or political gain. The good news is that ... organizations like ours can put measures in place to counter attacks."

Cisco security officials said improved security for oil and gas companies hinges on preventing malware attacks, which have been on the rise, as well as implementing ways of centralizing control and authentication of all users and devices.

"We applaud the Kuwait Oil Company for putting security at the forefront of its agenda," Cisco Managing Director and General Manager of Gulf, Levant and Pakistan and Head of Middle East Services Ziad Salameh said. "Cisco has been helping securing countries, cities and businesses of all sizes for decades, and we understand the rapidly changing security landscape. Our continued investment in software, data analytics and threat intelligence along with our assessment, monitoring, response and operational capabilities offer advanced threat protection across the entire attack continuum."