Armis Centrix™ Enhances IT and OT Asset Visibility and Security for Leading Poultry Processor
A large poultry manufacturer, established in 2016 in collaboration with a major warehouse retailer, operates a vertically integrated chicken processing facility in Nebraska. With 1,100 employees spread across four buildings and a daily processing capacity of 400,000 chickens, the facility includes a hatchery, feed mill, and processing plant, all crucial to supplying quality products to customers. The IT Network and Systems team, led by their Operations Manager, faced significant challenges in gaining visibility and control over the company’s extensive and diverse asset landscape, particularly within the OT environment.
The Challenge
Despite having a solid grasp of the IT assets within their office environment, the poultry manufacturer struggled with limited visibility into their OT network. The OT environment was a “black box,” primarily managed by various vendors who operated independently, leaving the IT team with little knowledge of the connected devices, their functions, or the traffic they generated. OT equipment consisted of workstations, conveyors, chain controllers, transfer stations, marination machines, case sealers, case labelers, and a variety of sensors, PLCs, and controllers.
“Our plant’s OT network was a big unknown,” the IT Operations Manager explained. “We had a very limited idea of what devices were connected, what they were doing, and how they were interacting with each other. It was a serious vulnerability that we needed to address.”
This lack of visibility presented significant risks. The IT team couldn’t efficiently monitor or manage OT devices, leading to concerns about potential vulnerabilities and the inability to quickly address issues. There was also the added concern of any process to effectively prioritize security findings according to genuine risk. The company’s initial attempts to manually track assets and monitor network activities were cumbersome and time-consuming, with investigations often taking hours to complete.
Continue reading to learn how the company overcame these challenges by deploying Armis Centrix™ for OT/IoT Security.
Challenges
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Limited visibility into the plant’s Operational Technology (OT) network -
Fragmented and siloed asset data from multiple vendors
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Lack of comprehensive monitoring of network traffic and device activities
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Inefficient manual processes for identifying and managing assets
Results
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Identified and tracked 4,500 assets, over four times more than the estimated 1,000 -
Improved response time for network investigations, reducing from 1 hour to 5 minutes
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Enhanced visibility and control over OT devices, reducing risks of unmonitored changes
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Streamlined audit preparation and compliance reporting with accurate real-time data