Product Security

We take security concerns seriously and work to quickly evaluate and address them. Once reported, we commit the appropriate resources to analyze, validate and provide corrective actions to address the issue.

The goal of our Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) is to minimize customers’ risk associated with security vulnerabilities by providing timely information, guidance and remediation of vulnerabilities in our products, including software and applications, hardware and devices, services and solutions. This team manages the receipt, investigation, internal coordination, remediation and disclosure of security vulnerability information related to Honeywell products.

PSIRT coordinates the response and disclosure of all externally identified product vulnerabilities.

We welcome reports from independent researchers, industry organizations, vendors and customers concerned with product security. To find out more information on how to report a potential vulnerability, please visit the Vulnerability Reporting web page.

We strive to follow Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD). This process allows independent reporters who discover a vulnerability contact Honeywell directly and allow us the opportunity to investigate and remediate the vulnerability before the reporter discloses the information to the public.

The PSIRT will coordinate with the reporter throughout the vulnerability investigation and will provide them with updates on progress as appropriate. With their agreement, the PSIRT may recognize the reporter on our acknowledgments for finding a valid product vulnerability and privately reporting the issue. After an update or mitigation information is publicly released by Honeywell, the reporter is welcome to discuss the vulnerability publicly.

Following the CVD allows us to protect our customers and at the same time, coordinate public disclosures and appropriately acknowledge the reporter for their finding. If a reported vulnerability involves a vendor product, the PSIRT will notify the vendor directly, coordinate with the reporter, or engage a third-party coordination center.

We use the Common Vulnerability Scoring System version 3.0 (CVSS v3.0) to evaluate the severity level of identified vulnerabilities. This enables a common scoring method and a common language to communicate the characteristics and impacts of vulnerabilities and attempts to establish a measurement of how much concern a vulnerability warrants. The model uses three distinct measurements or scores that include base, temporal and environmental calculations, each consisting of a set of metrics. The full standard, which is maintained by the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST).

We follow CVSS v3.0 Specification Document Qualitative Severity Rating Scale to define Severity Ratings as shown in the table below:

We reserve the right to deviate from these guidelines in specific cases if additional factors are not properly captured in the CVSS score.

When and where applicable, Honeywell Security Bulletins will provide the CVSS v3.0 Base Score. We focus on the base metric group only because it brings the most value to our customers and represents the intrinsic characteristics of a vulnerability. Risk assessment is based on an average of risk across a diverse set of installed systems and may not represent the true risk of your local installation.

We recommend consulting a security or IT professional to evaluate the risk of your specific configuration and encourages you to compute the environmental score based on your network parameters and that all customers take into account the base score and any temporal and environmental scores that may be relevant to their environment to assess their overall risk. This overall score represents a moment in time and is tailored to your specific environment. You should use a security or IT professional’s assessment of the issue and this final score to prioritize responses in your own environment.

Honeywell uses the following guidelines for non-third-party software vulnerabilities to determine the appropriate communication plan:

If there is a security issue with a third-party software component that is used in a Honeywell product, we may publish a Security Bulletin. If a Security Bulletin is published for a third-party software component vulnerability, then we typically use the CVSS score provided by the component creator. In some cases, the CVSS score may be adjusted to reflect the impact to the product.

We reserve the right to deviate from these guidelines in specific cases if additional factors are not properly captured in the CVSS score.

In most cases, we intend to notify customers when there is an identified practical workaround or fix for a security vulnerability. The notification is through either targeted communications or by posting a security bulletin on the specific product web page. This will be posted after the PSIRT has completed the vulnerability response process and determined that sufficient software patches or workarounds exist to address the vulnerability or subsequent public disclosure of code fixes is planned to address the vulnerabilities.

Security bulletins attempt to balance the right amount of information by providing sufficient details to enable customers to make informed decisions to protect themselves, but not verbose details that would allow malicious users to take advantage of the information. They will typically include the following information:

1. Products and versions affected.
2. Common Vulnerability Enumeration (CVE) identifier for the vulnerability.
3. Brief description of the vulnerability and potential impact if exploited.
4. The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) severity rating for the vulnerability.
5. Mitigation details such as an upgrade, fix, mitigation or other customer action.
6. Credit to the reporter of the identified vulnerability and acknowledgment for coordinating with Honeywell.

We will not provide additional information about the specifics of vulnerabilities beyond what is provided in the security bulletin or other documentation such as release notes, knowledge base articles, FAQs, etc. We do not distribute exploit or proof of concept code for identified vulnerabilities.

In accordance with industry practices, we do not share the findings from internal security testing or other types of security activities with external entities. It is important to note that any scan of our services and production systems will be considered an attack. If you are an OEM partner, please coordinate your needs with your Honeywell program manager.

We may release a special communication to respond quickly and appropriately to public disclosures where the vulnerability may have received significant public attention, or is expected to be actively exploited. In such an event, we may expedite the communication and may or may not include a complete set of patches or workarounds.

We take security concerns seriously and works to evaluate and address them in a timely manner. Response timelines will depend on many factors, including: the severity, the product affected, the current development cycle, QA cycles, and whether the issue can only be updated in a major release.

Remediation may take one or more of the following forms:

1. A new release
2. A Honeywell-provided patch
3. Instructions to download and install an update or patch from a third-party
4. A workaround to mitigate the vulnerability

Notwithstanding the foregoing, we do not guarantee a specific resolution for issues and not all issues identified may be fixed.