I was once challenged by a group of seasoned Critical Info Infrastructure (“CII”) operation leaders if there is ever true air-gapped deployment in the world. What a question! Air gapped setup in CIIs has been the way for high assurance cyber security. What has transpired in today’s landscape?

CII, especially OT networks are ideally air-gapped, but practical needs like remote monitoring and support, IT-OT convergence, and legacy systems often break this isolation, creating attack vectors.

There were unidirectional conduits designed to ensure 100% unidirectional traffic at the hardware level. However, it's very strength poses a challenge by prohibiting remote support during critical situations.

This presentation introduces a special paradigm: the "protocol breaker." Implemented through a hardware security (“hardsec”) device, it maintains an air gap between IT and OT networks while enabling controlled and highly secure bi-directional data transfer.