First Quality Enterprises CISO Ariel Litvin Honored with 2018 Northeast Information Security Executive of the Year Award Nomination

BOSTON, Oct. 04, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ariel Litvin, chief information security officer (CISO) at First Quality Enterprises (FQE) and a client of CyberX, the IIoT and industrial control system (ICS) security company, is a finalist for the 2018 Northeast Information Security Executive (ISE) of the Year Award. Litvin is being recognized for his outstanding leadership and exemplary achievements in information security, risk management, privacy and network security.

The First Quality group of companies, headquartered in Great Neck, New York, are leading manufacturers of non-discretionary consumer products and market leaders that offer a diversified and complete product offering of high-quality private-label and branded products. The company employs almost 5,000 team members.

Recognized as the industry’s most prestigious IT security award, the ISE Awards Program, under the auspices of the Tech Execs Network (T.E.N.), has become the most anticipated award program for security executives and their project teams across the U.S. and Canada.

Litvin, previously a security director at PwC, is being acknowledged for implementing a cohesive IT/OT security monitoring and governance strategy at FQE. By centralizing digital risk management in a single function, FQE can more effectively address advanced threats across both IT and OT, as well leverage existing investments in IT security personnel, SOC workflows, and security technologies such as SIEM and orchestration systems.

Litvin is also being recognized for fostering closer collaboration between the firm’s IT and OT organizations, and for helping remove silos that have traditionally existed between IT and OT in other companies.

“Reducing risk to our production operations is smart business,” said Litvin, CISO of First Quality Enterprises.  “CyberX gives us deep visibility into our OT environment and continuous OT risk management, while enabling unified security monitoring and governance across both IT and OT.”

At First Quality, smart manufacturing and IIoT are essential to achieving greater quality and efficiency in the company’s innovative manufacturing processes. In order to support the needs of the business while reducing risk, Litvin has implemented CyberX’s continuous OT threat monitoring and asset management platform in multiple plants, along with centralized management providing a global view of OT risk across all of its facilities.

CyberX is also integrated with the firm’s security stack including IBM QRadar (SIEM); Siemplify (security automation and orchestration); and its next-generation firewall infrastructure from Palo Alto Networks, enabling immediate blocking of malicious traffic identified by CyberX’s ICS-aware behavioral analytics and self-learning.

The ISE Northeast Executive Forum and Awards 2018 event was held on Wednesday, Oct. 3, at the Westin Times Square in New York City.

Litvin and CyberX to Present at Palo Alto Networks Ignite ’18 Europe Conference

Ariel Litvin and Nir Krumer, head of Product Management at CyberX, will be delivering a session titled “Effectively Detecting & Preventing Threats to Your ICS/SCADA Network,” at the Palo Alto Networks Ignite ’18 Europe Conference on Wednesday, Oct. 10 from 10:20 – 11:30 a.m. at the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition Center.

Litvin and Krumer’s presentation will describe:

• The organizational and technological challenges of integrating IT and OT security in the corporate SOC.
• How First Quality trained its SOC analysts to address crucial differences between IT and OT.
• How First Quality is using the seamless integration between CyberX and Palo Alto Networks to both detect and prevent attacks against their critical industrial infrastructure.

About CyberX
Founded by military cyber-experts with nation-state expertise defending critical infrastructure, CyberX provides the most widely-deployed platform for continuously reducing ICS and IIoT risk. CyberX is a member of the Palo Alto Networks Application Framework developer community and the IBM Security App Exchange Community and has partnered with premier solution providers worldwide including Optiv Security, DXC Technologies, and Deutsche-Telekom/T-Systems. For more information, visit CyberX-Labs.com.

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