The status quo: out-of-date and insecure data
In oil exploration, it’s common for multiple subcontractors to participate in drilling on the same rig – and through this process, there is a lot of data being siloed, causing operators to miss out on crucial and timely learnings from combining the data. Too often today, there is little data sharing on-rig, and data-sharing on-land is cumbersome with some data remaining trapped in silos. Some rigs and wells, too, are connected via satellite links with low bandwidth (due to their remote locations) and constrained links, making the necessary act of data sharing a lengthy and expensive process––delaying drilling and costing companies millions.
Operators and their contractors would like to save time and money by sharing and processing data locally and utilizing its benefits faster in order to adjust the various drilling subsystems to the real-time drilling conditions, resulting in more efficient drilling operations. Unfortunately, this causes major concerns around security, safety, and trust in data integrity. According to Deloitte, adoption of IoT technology in oil and gas has outpaced that of cybersecurity, leaving the industry a prime target for cyberattacks. Because of this, operators and their subcontractors on an oil rig will likely not want to share data or access with each other, over fear that another will get hacked, perhaps compromising their data and equipment and/or allowing the hack to propagate from one party to another. In order to operate safely and efficiently, then, oil rigs need a cybersecurity solution for multi-party device access and data sharing that 1. creates control over participating assets, 2. allows data to go in and out of those systems while maintaining the data’s integrity, and 3. provides the participants with granular control over who can access this critical data.
A new solution to keep rigs safe and profitable
To address this problem, Xage is offering a secure data-sharing solution to allow operators and their subcontractors on oil rigs to exchange critical device data, alarms, and analytics. By offering this solution for oil and gas production operators, Xage is empowering rig participants to safely share data, allowing the operator to reduce costs by shortening drilling times and capturing production revenue sooner that would otherwise be lost without timely data-driven decisions.
Xage is able to ensure safe data sharing through its Dynamic Data Security offering, which enables organizations to cooperate across entire data platforms, while assuring authenticity, integrity, and privacy between different applications, machines, organizations, and locations, allowing multiple participants to securely access data in any location. Through this, organizations can securely share data at the edge, from the edge to the datacenter and to the cloud, as well as from cloud/datacenter to edge, creating new operational insights and innovations––and enabling data-driven applications with customers and suppliers.
To learn more about Xage’s data-sharing offering for rig environments, visit https://xage.com/services/
