Armis & Fortinet ‘Better Together’ Overcoming Operational Technology Blind Spots in a Converged World
Today’s CISO’s are dealing with a complex set of challenges when it comes to protecting operational technology (OT) networks, especially industrial control systems (ICS) which often have a 20-year life cycle. Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting cyber-physical systems across every industry vertical, especially, manufacturing and critical national infrastructure, but OT networks could also support the building management system for a bank, hospital, retail or postal operation and become an exploit path if overlooked or undetected.
Understanding what assets exist across these environments e.g. asset visibility and context, then enforcing protection through approaches like zero trust network access (ZTNA) or network segmentation, is a key challenge for many organizations, as you cannot effectively protect what you cannot see or inventorize, yet every security control framework paradoxically starts from the basis that all assets are understood which is seldom the case. In some clients, sites may be distributed globally, have been acquired through merger and acquisition which further compounds the challenge of knowing what assets are on the network, and which ones are crucial to ensuring ‘uptime’ or require the most protection.
The complexity of these environments, many which often contain legacy operating systems, were in some cases built when security wasn’t a core consideration and the often mission critical nature of their operations, make them ideal targets where ‘downtime’ can result in safety critical situations or major production outages. OT networks that were historically thought to be ‘air gapped’ can be unintentionally connected to networks with I.T. and IoT e.g. an un-patchable security camera, which could be exploited as the ‘weakest link’ and an attacker’s entry point, or these networks could have been connected intentionally due to digital transformation demands, but without proper security consideration of the risks. All these scenarios present an easy hunting ground for threat actors if the appropriate visibility and protection is not in place.
Download the white paper to continue reading about how Armis and Fortinet have collaborated to integrate the Armis Centrix™ Platform with Fortinet’s Security Fabric to address the IT/OT challenges together and support our clients.
