Dispel’s mission is to safeguard industrial infrastructure and enhance operational efficiency for global operations. The company provides Zero Trust Access solutions for industrial control systems, with a focus on secure remote access and data streaming. Dispel’s core objective is to enable secure and efficient connectivity to these critical systems for both internal operators and third-party vendors.
A primary goal for Dispel is to simplify the complexities of managing and auditing access to industrial control systems. The company aims to achieve this by offering a unified platform that combines robust security with user-friendly features. Dispel was founded with the vision of utilizing moving target defense technology to advance cybersecurity and data privacy.
Dispel has established a strong market reputation, being recognized as a “High Performer” in G2’s reports, which reflects positive customer feedback on the platform’s simplicity and security. The company’s Zero Trust Access platform has also been acknowledged by industry analysts at Gartner and Forrester. Dispel serves a range of sectors, including manufacturing, utilities, government, and various Fortune 500 companies.
Offerings, Capabilities, and Integrations
Dispel provides secure remote access solutions specifically designed for industrial control systems (ICS) and operational technology (OT) environments. Its core offering is a Zero Trust platform that utilizes a proprietary Moving Target Defense (MTD) architecture. This approach enhances security by dynamically changing the network pathways, making it difficult for malicious actors to identify and attack critical assets. Dispel’s platform is built to integrate with existing IT and OT infrastructures, offering capabilities such as unified identity and access management, session logging and recording, and granular access controls. The company’s solutions are designed to be clientless, meaning no software needs to be installed on the assets being accessed. Dispel integrates with a variety of identity providers like Okta and Microsoft Active Directory, multi-factor authentication tools, and security information and event management (SIEM) platforms. This focus on securing cyber-physical systems gives Dispel a competitive edge in the industrial cybersecurity market, establishing its reputation as a specialized provider for sectors like manufacturing, utilities, and government.
Products and Services
Dispel’s primary offering is the Dispel Zero Trust Engine (ZTE), a unified platform for securing remote access to industrial environments. The ZTE provides several key services:
- Secure Remote Access: This is Dispel’s flagship service, providing temporary, just-in-time access for operators and third-party vendors to industrial control systems. It utilizes virtual desktops and enforces granular access controls based on time, user, and other parameters.
- Industrial Data Streaming: A newer service that enables the secure, real-time transfer of data from OT environments to analytics and AI platforms. This facilitates predictive maintenance, system patching, and enterprise-wide operational visibility.
- OT DMZ Unification: This capability consolidates and simplifies the security architecture of the industrial network’s demilitarized zone (DMZ) by unifying access points and protocols.
- Ongoing Threat Detection: The platform includes features for continuous monitoring of network activity to identify and respond to potential threats.
- Wicket Industrial Gateway: A physical or virtual appliance installed at each facility to connect the operational technology environment to the Dispel platform.
Target Customers
Dispel’s target customers are organizations with significant operational technology and industrial control system environments. These primarily include companies in the following sectors:
- Manufacturing: This includes industries such as automotive, food and beverage, chemicals, and consumer goods. Customers in this sector, like Huntsman Corporation, use Dispel to secure plant operations and enable data streaming for optimization.
- Utilities: This encompasses energy, oil and gas, and water utilities that need to protect critical infrastructure. Dispel helps these organizations manage remote access for a distributed workforce and third-party contractors.
- Government: Dispel serves government entities that require highly secure and compliant remote access solutions for their critical systems. The platform’s alignment with standards like NIST and NERC-CIP is a key benefit for this sector.
Cloud Integrations and Marketplaces
Dispel offers integrations with major cloud providers and maintains a presence on several cloud marketplaces.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Dispel integrates with AWS, which it identifies as a leading cloud platform. Dispel is also present on the AWS Marketplace with its Dispel Zero Trust Engine. This offering is designed to provide secure remote access, data streaming, and threat monitoring for industrial control systems (ICS) and operational technology (OT).
- Microsoft Azure
Dispel integrates with Microsoft Azure, noting that Azure provides scalable cloud services, including platform and infrastructure solutions. Dispel’s default SaaS deployment is hosted on the Azure cloud, and it offers options for customers to integrate their own Azure subscriptions. The Dispel Zero Trust Engine is available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, positioned as a cybersecurity solution for OT environments that helps organizations meet compliance standards.
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Dispel lists Google Cloud Platform as a cloud provider integration, recognizing that GCP offers a range of cloud solutions. Dispel does not have a listed product on the Google Cloud Marketplace.
Key People
- President & Co-Founder: Ian Schmertzler
- Chief Executive Officer: Ethan Schmertzler
- Chief Technology Officer: Chris DiLorenzo
- Chief Information Security Officer: Dean Macris
Key Facts
- Headquarters Location: New York, NY.
- Number of Employees: 51-200.
- Annual Revenue: $1.3M.
- Parent Company: None.
- Subsidiary Companies: None.
- Publicly Listed: No.
Analyst Recognition
Dispel has been recognized by the following analyst groups:
- Forrester: Dispel was named a Leader in “The Forrester New Wave™: Secure Communications, Q4 2018” report. The report highlighted Dispel as a best fit for organizations needing segmentation and defense against targeted attacks.
- Gartner: Dispel was selected as a “2017 Gartner Cool Vendor in Unified Communications”.
There is no available information to suggest that Dispel has been recognized by IDC or Everest Group.
