Documentation
DocsOT Protocols & Networks

Purdue Model Firewall Policies

Estimated reading time: 3 min

The Purdue model, briefly

The Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture (PERA) segments the industrial network into levels (0 to 5) so that an incident in IT (level 4-5, offices/ERP) can never reach physical control directly (level 0-2, sensors and PLCs). iGromi OS is deployed respecting that segmentation rather than ignoring it.

The levels that matter for your firewall

  • Level 0-1: Sensors, actuators, PLCs. Isolated field network, no direct internet access.
  • Level 2: Local SCADA/HMI for the line.
  • Level 3 (industrial DMZ): This is where the iGromi Bridge lives. It is the only boundary authorized to cross between OT (0-2) and IT (4-5).
  • Level 4-5: ERP, corporate cloud, internet.

Golden rule: outbound-only

The iGromi Bridge is designed to accept no inbound connections from the cloud. Every connection is initiated by the Bridge itself, outbound (WSS/MQTT over TLS 443). In practice, on your plant firewall:

  1. Do not open inbound ports from the internet into the OT segment. Ever.
  2. Allow outbound only from the Bridge's IP towards the iGromi Cloud endpoints, port 443/8883.
  3. Explicitly block any traffic from the office segment (level 4) straight into the field segment (level 0-1) — the Bridge is the only permitted crossing, and only in the OT→Cloud direction.

Verification

Under this policy, a port scan (Nmap/Shodan) run from the internet against your plant's public IP should find no open port associated with the Bridge — it is undetectable because it never listens, it only initiates connections.

Where to go next

Is this for your plant?

This documentation describes how it is done. If you want to know what your particular installation would need, which equipment can be read today and which cannot, the conversation is shorter than reading the whole wiki.

Was this documentation helpful?