Five Ways Armis and mCloud Supercharge Cyber Resiliency and Asset Performance in Industrial Environments

Many industrial enterprises are looking for a more streamlined way to get more from critical assets while protecting them from evolving cyber risks. Asset performance management, which strives to align operational resources (software and hardware) with positive and profitable business outcomes, is usually part of the picture. After all, maximizing production, safety, and reliability while reducing costs are top priorities. Increasingly, however, your asset managers are also recognizing the need to team up with internal cybersecurity teams to safeguard your valuable corporate resources from cyberattacks that can potentially cripple operations, impact safety, and even trigger environmental hazards.

Fortunately, there’s now an efficient way to merge asset performance management with cyber resiliency. The integrated, cloud-based Armis and mCloud AssetCare™ solution is a cost-effective way to significantly reduce cyber risks while enhancing asset performance, availability, and efficiency. mCloud AssetCare helps you maximize the performance of your energy-intensive industrial assets by combining the power of IoT, AI, and the cloud to empower you to take the right operations and maintenance actions at the right time. The Armis Asset Intelligence Platform is an agentless and completely passive device security platform that gives you comprehensive visibility into every connected traditional IT and industry-specific operational technology (OT) asset.  Armis not only tells you the OS and firmware versions, owner, physical location, and more for assets, it also continuously monitors behavior and can provide deep contextual intelligence on asset uses and relationships and detect and help block threats in real time.

Below are five ways Armis and mCloud AssetCare work together to provide a scalable, comprehensive, and integrated asset performance management and cybersecurity solution for any industrial environment.

1. Gain Full Visibility Into All Automation System Components

In many industrial enterprises, automation equipment components that keep operations humming number in the thousands—and, more than likely, they come from different vendors. The typical industrial enterprise has both OT and IT resources, sometimes residing in separate networks and sometimes converged in the same network. Resources span a huge number of systems and assets, including multiple database and engineering servers, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems,  OT network switches, and automation controllers (PLCS, DCSs, PACs), human machine interfaces (HMIs), operator workstation PCs, and historian servers, as well as wireless networks and a mix of network-connected smart devices.

Armis works hand in hand with mCloud AssetCare to enable you to gain full visibility into the performance and integrity of all automation system components. The solution facilitates the discovery and management of OT and IT security vulnerabilities and alerts. It also monitors communication among OT/IT assets in real time and provides system diagnostic capabilities.

Instead of simply tracking individual components or sites, the complete, real-time and authoritative  view offered by Armis and mCloud AssetCare gives asset operators and managers in-depth understanding of enterprise-wide system health and resiliency. Rather than having to collect this data from each asset individually, you get the big picture, along with the drill-down details through a single, easy-to-use dashboard.

Complete asset visibility helps you create consistent usage and security policies across all assets. You can also pinpoint changes in asset operation or behavior, so you can take proactive measures before a major issue or a potential outage occurs. If a major outage does occur, real-time diagnostics on every automation component enables you to zero in on problems and remediate them faster.

Benefits:

• Reduce downtime and lost productivity due to threats or lack of timely maintenance and updates.
• Plan operations and maintenance activities and address cybersecurity risk management at the same time.

2. Monitor Baseline Asset Behaviors and Interdependencies

There are many ways to measure and monitor automation system performance. Some of these parameters include server, workstation, and automation controller memory and CPU usage; component temperatures; and power supply health.But without the ability to track asset diagnostics, vulnerabilities, and network communications in real time, it can be difficult to protect your OT/IT environment and maximize lifecycle management. Armis and mCloud AssetCare work together to provide automation system component diagnostics in real time, monitor network communications, and uncover interdependencies.

Benefits:

• Perform continuous risk analysis.
• Diagnose incidents faster.
• Prevent system failures.

3. Drive Predictive Maintenance and Resiliency With Data

Tried and true time- or usage-based preventative maintenance programs, prepared-response maintenance programs, and critical system component analysis are better than reactive maintenance. But they won’t eliminate issues that arise in between scheduled maintenance times or during a cyberattack.

The joint Armis and mCloud AssetCare solution is designed to continuously monitor your automation systems and alert you of changes in asset behavior before there’s an incident or major outage. That means your team is empowered to make real-time operations decisions, respond to cyber incidents, and perform maintenance and remediations. Based on data derived from the joint Armis and mCloud solution, they can make informed decisions and create workflows based on predictive maintenance.

Benefits:

• Improve maintenance, system management, and uptime.
• Make better, faster decisions and engage the right resources when early warning signs appear.
• Pinpoint system faults and resolve outage issues quicker.

4. Fully Implement Cybersecurity Measures

In the past, cybersecurity measures for process industries relied on a “defense-in-depth” strategy, which often involved separating the OT network from the IT network. Today, business productivity demands and cloud adoption are driving the evolution of automation architectures leading to a convergence of OT and IT networks.

What strategies can you adopt to protect your changing OT/IT environment from cyberthreats to avoid business disruption? Network segmentation and firewalls are partial solutions, but an integrated cyberthreat detection solution is essential for enhancing your awareness of potential threats. The Armis and mCloud AssetCare solution helps identify all assets and communications on your networks and instantly notifies you of suspicious activity to prevent or limit potential damage. It catalogs and tracks all the devices and traffic on your OT/IT network, so you can be more confident about your cybersecurity risk posture.

Benefits:

• Safeguard critical assets and the entire facility against cyberattacks systems by creating zero trust networks.
• Support secure OT/IT convergence and digital transformation.

5. Rely on Enterprise-wide Visibility and Analytics

Deploying new solutions across a facility and or multiple facilities can be a daunting and costly project. This is especially true for on-premises solutions that require a new technology infrastructure and software and additional staff with the domain knowledge to deploy and update these solutions.

There’s a better, more efficient, and more cost-effective way. By leveraging Armis combined with mCloud AssetCare, any business unit can quickly access the insights from any division, facility, or equipment class  anytime and from anywhere. The single unified asset database of your automation systems displays asset diagnostics and cyber health through easy-to-use reporting and dashboards.

Benefits:

• Achieve greater awareness of the interdependencies that impact automation system health, efficiency, and overall operational integrity.
• Enhance business decision-making and the resiliency of your operations by sharing data and analytics with engineering, operations, maintenance, IT, and security teams in real time.

Conclusion

To optimize use and performance of their connected assets and keep operations humming efficiently, asset security and performance are critical to industrial enterprises.The Armis and mCloud AssetCare solution is designed to help your facilities and enterprise reach their full operating potential while remaining secure from cyberthreats.

To learn more, watch the Armis and mCloud solution video.

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