FAQ
Before you write.
Short answers to the questions a plant asks first.
If the answer you need is not here, the contact page is one email address and a real reply.
01
The passive assessment.
- What is a passive assessment?
- We listen to the plant network’s own traffic, from a mirror port on a switch or a tap, and build a list of what is connected, what it talks to and which conversations cross the boundary into the office or the internet. Nothing is sent into a controller. The output is a document the plant manager can hold.
- Is a passive assessment risk-free?
- It is lower risk, not no risk. Configuring a mirror port is a change to a live switch, and a tap is an in-line insertion, so both are scheduled and agreed with the plant first. What passive avoids is the active scan, which can stop an old controller.
- What can’t passive listening tell you?
- It only sees what talks while we listen and what passes the ports we are given. A device that is switched off, or on a segment we cannot reach, does not appear. Make and firmware are inferred from traffic rather than read from the device. That is why the capture is paired with a cabinet walk-down and the drawings and contracts you already have.
- Will it cause downtime?
- No production change is made during a passive assessment. The one configuration step, the mirror port, is agreed and timed with the plant, and on older switches we check the load it adds before it is enabled.
02
What Range does and does not touch.
- Do you scan our controllers?
- No. We do not run active scans on Level 1 or Level 0, and nothing active happens anywhere without written authorisation naming what will be done, to which systems, when and by whom.
- Do you change anything on the plant floor?
- Not during an assessment. Where the report recommends changes, segmentation for example, they are planned as staged work around your maintenance windows, with a named person from the plant beside us for anything on a live control network.
- Do you sell or install security products?
- No. We do not resell anything, and we do not put software in the network to block commands. If a finding needs a product, the report says what kind and why, and you buy it from whoever you choose.
- Do you monitor our plant around the clock?
- No. Range does not run a 24/7 operation. Where ongoing monitoring makes sense, the report describes what to watch and how, and how to keep it to a cadence a small team can run.
03
How engagements start.
- How does an engagement start?
- With an email to contact@range-ot.com describing what you run. We reply with questions, agree a scope in writing, then schedule the capture around your production plan. If your work has to fall inside a shutdown window, tell us the dates early.
- What do you need from us?
- A network drawing if you have one, however old; a contact who knows the floor; a mirror port or a place for a tap on the switches that matter; and access to the cabinets for the walk-down. We sign your site rules and your confidentiality terms before anything else.
- Who do you work with?
- Privately owned plants and facilities in the UAE, across nine industries. We screen out government, semi-government and designated critical-infrastructure engagements by choice.
- What happens to our data afterwards?
- Captures and working files are deleted once the report is accepted, and we send you the deletion log. Client findings, asset counts and drawings never appear on this site, not even anonymised.