Is OT security your top priority?
In the world of cybersecurity, there is no silver bullet. What you can do in your organization is to minimize the attack surfaces and threat vectors, and be vigilant and proactive in your defence against adversaries. Just like any other vertical, Industrial organizations are moving rapidly to take advantage of IT technologies in their operational technology (OT) environments to become more competitive.
At the same time, Security is becoming a priority in industrial IT and Operational Technology (OT) as connectivity to external networks grow and there is an increase in the attacks on Operational Technology. While some organizations are still not aware of the threats that cyberattacks pose to their OT assets and for these organizations, their measures for cybersecurity are usually not tailored to operational technology. While others who while not aware are keen to implement a multi-layered defence-in-depth cybersecurity strategy and stop the cyber threat early in the kill chain across both the IT and OT environments.
While industrial systems are becoming more and more connected, they are also being exposed to more vulnerabilities. The switch from closed to open systems, also referred to as the IT-OT convergence, isbreeding new security threats that need to be addressed.
The key most important reasons for organizations who are in the look out to safeguard their industrial networks are the high costing industrial equipment and the fear of causing damage to communities and economies that an attack could generate. The strongest negative impact of a breach in an industrial set up could even mean casualties in a worst-case scenario.The top three challenges of industrial OT :
Two of the major challenges in securing industrial environments have been initial design and ongoing maintenance. What may have been a solid design, to begin with is eroded through ad hoc updates and individual changes to hardware and machinery without consideration for the broader network impact. This kind of organic growth has led to miscalculations of expanding networks and the introduction of wireless communication in a standalone fashion, without consideration of the impact to the original security design. These uncontrolled or poorly controlled OT network evolutions have, in many cases, over time led to weak or inadequate network and systems security.
Legacy components are not restricted to isolated network segments but have now been consolidated into the IT operational environment. From a security perspective, this is potentially dangerous as many devices may have historical vulnerabilities or weaknesses that have not been patched and updated, or it may be that patches are not even available due to the age of the equipment.
Many industrial control protocols, particularly those that are serial based, were designed without inherent strong security requirements. Furthermore, their operation was often within an assumed secure network. In addition to any inherent weaknesses or vulnerabilities, their operational environment may not have been designed with secured access control in mind.
To mitigate such farfetched repercussions and challenges, it is in the best interest of an industrial organization to secure its IT & OT technology. An effective OT Security strategy puts in place solutions that allow complete visibility of network control traffic and establishing the right security policies and thus does not disrupt operations or risk non-compliance. A good OT Security strategy protects processes, people, and profit while significantly reducing security vulnerabilities and incidents.
Cymune OT Security offers a portfolio of OT security solutions that help industrial, asset-intensive environments monitor and secure networks, protect endpoints, and deliver cybersecurity services.
Help you establish a complete asset inventory and an instant assessment of vulnerabilities & exposures for each asset along with automated impact-based security & operational risk scoring.
Cutting edge Security Monitoring Tools with SIEM capabilities and interactive visualizations of threats and risks. Continuous monitoring and behavior pattern searching.
On-the-fly to detect emerging threats. We deploy a highly skilled global team to validate and help you make sense of threat data. Our threat analysts are also available 24×7 to discuss global threats you are concerned about.