Wind River's VxWorks is Now Wurldtech's Achilles Certified

Cyber threats to mission-critical systems are growing in frequency and complexity.

 

Therefore, it is important to have a secure infrastructure that protects vital data against hackers, said Jens Wiegand, general manager of industrial and medical solutions at Wind River, a provider of embedded and mobile software.

 

Wind River recently earned Wurldtech Achilles certification for its VxWorks real-time operating system.

 

According to a press release, Wind River's (News - Alert) VxWorks is the first real-time operating system to earn certification under Wurldtech's Achilles certification program.

 

Wurldtech's Achilles certification program is an internationally recognized standard for industrial cyber security. It is offered by Wurldtech Security Technologies, a provider of cyber security testing and certification solutions for critical infrastructure industries.

 

With this certification, customers of Wind River will be able to implement VxWorks in different market segments, such as process automation, power and energy, oil and gas, transportation, and medical, along with certified defenses against cyber attacks.

 

Wiegand added, "Having achieved the Achilles Certified designation from Wurldtech, our customers can now develop their entire device on a secure, certified, out-of-the-box platform, while minimizing the final certification process, shrinking application development time, driving costs down and increasing competitive advantage in a global market."

 

Company officials with Wind River said that VxWorks now meets the Achilles certification conformance requirements at Gigabit Ethernet, passing both 100Mbit and 1GigE certifications. These certifications are recognized by most industrial and medical manufacturers to defend control devices against increased exposure to cyber security attacks.

 

Facilitating developers to build secure devices conforming to the Achilles certification, the Achilles Certified VxWorks leverages a pre-validated, real-time operating system that limits unpredictability.

 

In addition, the Achilles Certified platform includes networking stack. This helps developers to develop end product with less time-to-market, lowered development and certification expenditures, and less overall risk of cyber attacks.

 

According to the release, the Achilles Certified designation has been integrated as a mandatory selection requirement by many industrial organizations, from all critical infrastructure sectors such as Shell and Total. It is also been implemented in over 14 industrial control systems from manufacturers including ABB, Honeywell (News - Alert) and Emerson.

 

"Suppliers integrating VxWorks into their critical control systems will now have an additional level of assurance that network stack communications are safe, secure and reliable," said Nate Kube, chief technology officer of Wurldtech Security Technologies. "We are pleased to collaborate with Wind River and will continue to address key challenges facing embedded device makers against cyber attacks."