Drilling Down on Cybersecurity

INS partnered with Moxa to help one of North America's largest drilling operators overhaul aging cybersecurity infrastructure across a large-scale network of rigs. The result: modern firewall technology, centralized security management, and a long-term partner that keeps pace with an evolving threat landscape.

Everyone in oil and gas has a plan for what happens when a drill breaks. Far fewer have a plan for what happens when the network does. 

For the team running one of North America’s largest drilling fleets, that gap had been growing for years. The systems keeping their rigs safe, connected, and productive were digital—and those digital systems had a problem that no amount of field experience could fix on its own. 

With a large fleet of rigs spread across multiple regions, their cybersecurity infrastructure had aged past the point of adequacy. And in an industry increasingly targeted by sophisticated cyber threats, “adequate” was no longer good enough.

The Problem Was Already on the Clock

The operator’s existing firewalls were end-of-life. Replacement parts were scarce, the hardware lacked modern threat detection capabilities, and managing security policies across a geographically distributed rig network had become a slow, manual, inefficient process.

Individually, these were serious problems. Together, they represented something worse: an organization that couldn’t see threats coming, couldn’t respond quickly when they did, and couldn’t manage its own defenses at scale.

One cyberattack or network failure could halt drilling operations, expose sensitive data, trigger significant financial losses, and in worst-case scenarios, create real safety risks for personnel on the rigs.

This wasn’t a back-office IT conversation, it was an operational priority. 

Building the Right Solution from the Ground Up

INS worked alongside our customer and Moxa to design and implement a complete firewall overhaul.

The centerpiece of the solution was Moxa’s EDR-G9010 industrial VPN secure router, chosen specifically because it was built for environments like this one. It carries the certifications that oil and gas demands—Class I Division II, ATEX ratings—and is engineered to perform continuously in harsh field conditions.

Beyond the rugged form factor, it brought exactly what our customer needed: advanced access control policies, VPN tunneling for secure communications between rigs and corporate, and gigabit-speed networking capable of handling the increasing data loads modern operations generate.

On top of the hardware, Moxa's intrusion prevention system licensing added continuous traffic monitoring to detect and neutralize threats in real time. And centralized security management licensing meant the operator could finally configure, monitor, and update policies across their entire rig network from a single platform, eliminating the complexity that had made their previous system so difficult to manage.

OT Security Is Different. We Treat It That Way.

One of the most consistent blind spots in industrial cybersecurity is the tendency to focus protection efforts on the IT side (email systems, user endpoints, communication platforms) while the operational technology layer goes underprotected. For a drilling operator, the OT network carries the entire operation. A compromised rig network can mean a shutdown, significant financial exposure, and personnel at risk—consequences that dwarf a typical data breach.

INS brought the OT expertise this project required. We designed a solution tailored to the operator's existing infrastructure, managed the transition to minimize operational disruption, and have continued as a stocking distributor for ongoing break-fix needs and regional facility restocking since day one. When something needs to be addressed, we're ready.

An Operation That's Measurably More Secure

Our customer came away from this project with a cybersecurity infrastructure that finally matched the scale and complexity of their operations.

Advanced threat detection is active. Remote access is secure. Security policies are managed centrally across the entire rig network. The risk of downtime from cyber threats or equipment failure has been significantly reduced.

More importantly, they have a partner who understands what's at stake and stays engaged as the threat landscape continues to evolve. The relationship that started with a firewall upgrade is still active today.

In oil and gas, the cost of inaction has a way of making itself known at the worst possible time. This customer made the call before that happened. INS helped make sure it was the right one.

Is your OT network security keeping pace with modern threats? Talk to INS.

Our customer has moved beyond a collection of disconnected sites. They have a connected system that’s built to scale.