OIL, GAS AND UTILITIES

Adding reliability and efficiency

Rugged devices that won’t let you down

Route1 Secure remote access

When times are tough, essential services become even more crucial. You’re part of making the world turn. Can you afford to have the tools you use every day let you down?

The obvious answer is no, you can’t. Oil and gas operators, utilities and other providers of the resources the world runs on have depended on rugged devices in the field for a long while now. These are tools that we can no longer do without: rugged laptops, tablets and mobiles cut across distance and time, record and transmit data of all kinds, and give us access to the measurement and analytics tools we need. They just work. And they keep on working, no matter what the conditions.

Vulnerability-free technology


When we supply customers with rugged laptops, tablets and other hard goods, one concern that we have is their safety from a cybersecurity perspective. Not just the mechanisms of securing data, but the security of the devices themselvesas the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack illustrated. 

A report by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense found that in 2018, Army and Air Force Government Purchase Card (GPC) holders bought at least $32.8 million of commercial off-the-shelf information technology items with known cybersecurity vulnerabilities.1 If even the DoD is buying devices with known vulnerabilities, how likely is it that other organizations are as well?

Route1 is keenly aware of such vulnerabilities. We provide rugged technologies for utilities, security agencies, the federal government and our armed forces that are vulnerability-free. Our services can include pre-deployment planning, deployment project management and installation, and post-deployment maintenance—a full-service solution. We can also provide your organization with the devices you need on a technology-as-a-service (TaaS) basis. This allows you to avoid tying up capital in devices that obsolesce rapidly by entering into a lease agreement, complete with a technology upgrade path.

 

Route1 Secure remote access
Route1 Secure remote access

Vulnerability-free technology

When we supply customers with rugged laptops, tablets and other hard goods, one concern that we have is their safety from a cybersecurity perspective. Not just the mechanisms of securing data, but the security of the devices themselves—as the recent debate over Huawei 5G networks illustrates.

A report by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense found that in 2018, Army and Air Force Government Purchase Card (GPC) holders bought at least $32.8 million of commercial off-the-shelf information technology items with known cybersecurity vulnerabilities.1 If even the DoD is buying devices with known vulnerabilities, how likely is it that other organizations are as well?

Route1 is keenly aware of such vulnerabilities. We provide rugged technologies for utilities, security agencies, the federal government and our armed forces that are vulnerability-free. Our services can include pre-deployment planning, deployment project management and installation, and post-deployment maintenance—a full-service solution. We can also provide your organization with the devices you need on a technology-as-a-service (TaaS) basis. This allows you to avoid tying up capital in devices that obsolesce rapidly by entering into a lease agreement, complete with a technology upgrade path.

Eliminate issues, including those you never knew about


The enormous quantities of data that utilities, gas and oilfield operators generate go largely unharnessed. Throughput, pressure, resistance, chokepoints, delay—these are the vital statistics that hold the key to further efficiencies. The challenge is getting beyond overview-level quantitative information with process data collected from Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices. And then turning that data into action.

The technology exists.

Route1 has built and implemented analytics-based systems that have enabled organizations like yours to secure, capture, interpret and deliver process data in a format they can act on immediately.

  • Discover and quickly solve the hidden bottlenecks that you never knew about.
  • Get to the bottom of previously impenetrable issues.
  • Locate the exact inputs that are causing problems—and solve them.

Implement military-grade security

Five Military Crests

According to IBM’s 2020 threat intelligence Index2, cyber-targeting of industrial control systems and similar operational technologies has increased over 2000 per cent since 2018. Organized crime syndicates joined early solo actors; now state-sponsored teams are capable of planting backdoors or malware in systems. With the rapid adoption of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies in utilities, risks are on the rise.

Route1 builds every technology solution with security as a first principle. That’s where our organization began and continues to excel: we invented data security and user authentication technologies that landed us patents in Canada and the U.S. and technology accreditations (ATOs) with the U.S. Department of Defense. From user authentication to securing data at rest, data in transit or data in use, we help organizations like yours achieve military-grade data security.

1Audit of the DoD’s Management of the Cybersecurity Risks for Government Purchase Card Purchases of Commercial Off-the-Shelf Items – Report No. DODIG-2019-106, July 2019

2IBM Security X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2020