Technology leaders across the world are adopting a proactive mindset towards Operational Technology (OT) security. Traditionally, OT security initiatives lag the IT security by at least 5-7 years, but the trend is changing.
The cybersecurity landscape for the OT environments is rapidly evolving, driven by trends like intelligent automation, remote work, IoT proliferation, cloud adoption, and increasingly sophisticated attacks. Over the last few years, we have seen OT systems permeate everything from power grids, mining and water treatment plants to manufacturing facilities. This spread and dependence has led to increased risk, with successful attacks shutting down critical systems, causing blackouts, halting production, or even leading to equipment damage. Enhancing the security posture of OT systems is vital to protecting critical infrastructure, preventing financial losses, safeguarding data, meeting regulatory requirements, maintaining customer trust, and ensuring operational efficiency. The board increasingly demands a robust strategy at place. With the growing sophistication of cyber threats and the increasing integration of OT and IT systems, prioritizing OT security is essential for the resilience and success of modern organizations.
OT security has unique challenges due to the multiplicity of devices like outdated windows systems, embedded devices like PLCs/Control systems and specialized networking systems. While approaches for managing IT and OT security differ, the overall security strategy needs to ensure both are looked as a whole. IT security focuses on Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA), OT security is concerned on Safety (protecting humans and property from harm), Productivity (zero disruptions) and Reliability (Safeguarding systems against attacks). However, there is huge intersection point of these two approaches that needs to be part of the strategy
While there are multiple frameworks to manage OT security, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework works well due to its simplicity, customizability, and clear guidance. Its IDENTIFY, PROTECT, DETECT, RESPOND and RECOVER stages can be logically applied to any context.
Recommendation to plan OT security program which can help improve security posture
- Set Your Goals and Assess Current State: Create a vision of the future defining end state. Secure leadership buy-in as it needs to align with business priorities. Make an honest assessment of the existing state. This is a good opportunity for the CISO and CIO to take the lead and help shape the vision.
- Align On a Roadmap: Adopt a cybersecurity framework which suits your organization. Have a common understanding of the risks and translate them into short term and long term plans. The roadmap needs to cover various milestones towards achieving the end state. Consider engaging an external expert here to ensure best practices are included.
- Create an Actionable Plan with Clear Metric: Break down the plan into actionable items with clear roles and responsibilities across the IT, OT and business teams. Each milestone must have a well-defined metrics. This phase involves deciding on technologies to invest in, skills to be acquire/ build, a culture to adopt and processes to be establish.
- Execute, Measure and Report Progress: Execute minor and major projects with timelines that allows steps towards achieving the goals. Implementing OT security projects is challenging, so it’s important that the team works dedicatedly with clear KPIs.
- Govern Strongly and Recalibrate: Ensure a proper governance structure. Engage CXOs related to the supply chain to own and drive the agenda. Strong governance increases the chances of timely completion and successful outcome.
The proactive mindset towards OT security will deliver solid protection against any breaches and resilience for faster recovery in case the inevitable happens. Employees will be the biggest enablers of success. More importantly, this is a great opportunity to set a competitive differentiator.
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