Jacob Marzloff is the co-founder and president of Armexa, an OT/ICS cybersecurity firm based in Houston, Texas, and a TXOne Certified Partner. Jacob grew up in southern Louisiana, where the oil, gas, and chemical industries are part of the landscape. He spent a lot of time around the plants, working different jobs and gathering irreplaceable field experience. Early in his career, he landed at a major petroleum company, where he managed 75 facilities. “I was on-call 24/7, and you can’t beat the experience that comes from jumping in, getting your hands dirty, and solving problems on the spot.”
With Armexa based in Houston, many of its core clients are in the energy sector. The company also serves clients in other industrial environments such as manufacturing and food and beverage to name a few. “The principles of OT security are the same, regardless of industry,” Jacob said. “Basically, if a computer makes something move in the physical world, that’s what we’re focused on securing.”
Jacob and his Armexa co-founder Eric Forner both came from the big consulting world prior to starting the company. “The innate desire to solve problems from early in my career never left, and at Armexa, we get in the trenches and find high-impact, low-cost solutions for our clients,” he said. “We believe in more than just talking about OT problems. We take actions that solve them.”
Taking Action is the Basis of Armexa’s TXOne Partnership
Jacob explained that as recently as ten years ago, people were still trying to figure out what the problem was, which led to a lot of monitoring, visibility, anomaly detection tools, etc. “As someone who used to run those programs, I didn’t need any more tools just telling me there were problems. I needed something that could actually help me solve them. And TXOne is excellent at that.”
From a capability standpoint, Jacob said TXOne fits that need perfectly.
“It will see a problem and tell you about the problem, but it also gives you the insight and ability to take action,” he said. “Asset inventory, anomaly detection, and so forth are important, but we’re moving from just spreadsheets and diagnostic data and logs to true action. And that’s great.”
Legacy Tools Just Weren’t Cutting It
Armexa is a vendor-neutral company. The team is familiar with solutions offered by various companies, and they know what works. They specifically look for tools that present interesting and unique solutions they feel confident bringing to their clients.
“There are some legacy tools that we once talked to people about. Maybe 15 years ago, they were great, but they haven’t kept up with the needs, nor do they have the features that TXOne does,” Jacob said.
Many of the tools Armexa considered, even from major suppliers, had also suffered through years of multiple acquisitions and owners, which kept development lagging. “These companies aren’t focused on operations and operational technology. You can kind of hand-jam their solutions in, but they’re not always fit for purpose,” he explained.
A Passion for OT System Reliability and Safety
Working around operational technology all of his life and coming from a family that did the same, Jacob has a great deal of respect for both the power and dangers that OT systems represent, which is evident in Armexa’s approach.
“I have a lot of care and passion for the reliability and safety of those systems because they affect a lot of people that I know personally, and I like being close to that,” he said. “At the end of the day, our clients don’t make money because they have the coolest computers or management software. They make money because they produce oil and gas and sell it to market, so being able to secure those systems and help them run more reliably is pretty exciting to be around.”
And the excitement never ends. “There’s been a trend of integrating security into the greenfield engineering process for our large clients, and we’re taking those lessons learned and applying them to smaller clients.”
Jacob explained that all of these OT systems are interconnected (for example, a large refinery is connected to a small pipeline), and for that reason, it’s critical that the entire “system” is secured.
“What’s great is that we have an opportunity to increase the reliability of the system when we design with security in mind,” Jacob said. “Handling this way also avoids expensive brownfield remediation once the site is commissioned.”
Closing the Gaps
When Jacob and his team assess these facilities, they see a lot of fixable issues.
“We find firewalls that aren’t blocking much of anything. The networks aren’t segmented. There’s going to be one username and password that everybody knows and everybody shares!” he said.
They’ve seen raw internet on control systems. “The system integrators needed access and didn’t want to fly out to the facility every time,” Jacob surmised.
Jacob and the entire Armexa team acknowledge that the threats are real but also acknowledge that there’s no need to panic. They advise their clients to take some practical and achievable steps forward.
“Yes, there are existential threats, and yes, nation-states are out there,” he said. “But if you only focus on that, people are afraid even to try to solve the problem.”
Jacob recommends a bite-sized approach to solving problems. “We focus on real things we can talk about and fix that may not even involve technology. Perhaps not letting everyone share a username and password, for starters,” he suggested.
“That’s an easy fix, so let’s solve that,” Jacob said. “Then, solve the next thing. Look at the firewall and segment the network. And by doing that, we’re integrating security into these facilities and helping them lock down from those existential threats,” Jacob added, reiterating the importance of actually solving a problem instead of simply talking about it.
TXOne: The Next Logical Step
Jacob recommends that businesses look at their current security technology to make sure it’s being utilized to the fullest extent possible. He also recommends exploring new technologies.
“It’s possible to find new technology that you can integrate into your system that doesn’t just introduce more busy work, but can reduce your workload and actually help you take action when things are happening,” Jacob advised. And that’s where TXOne fits in especially well, he believes, and why the partnership is so valuable to Armexa clients.
He saw that TXOne was actually focused on operations. “There are so many vendors in the space doing the same things, but TXOne has a unique viewpoint. For me, it was personally very exciting. The intrusion prevention system alone is a huge value add.”
Jacob said many of his clients still want full network visibility, but he sees TXOne as the next logical step. “The security market has to move beyond just pure visibility. They have to combine it with actual prevention.”
Explore OT Cybersecurity Technologies
Learn more about Armexa and its implementation services for TXOne solutions at Armexa Advanced Cybersecurity Solutions.
