5 Tips to Improve OT Security
Changing
OT Security
In recent years, OT security has changed with the emergence of the connection between OT and IT, also known as the OT/IT convergence.
In this article, we briefly set out five tips to improve your OT security.
1) Asset Inventory
You can’t protect what you don’t know you have.
Keeping a complete and updated asset inventory will allow you to protect your assets.
This tip is the most important and basic at the same time. The asset inventory is the baseline in your OT security management.
2) Organisation
Previously, OT and IT departments had little overlap, but this is not the case today.
So, it is important to bridge the organisational gaps between OT and IT. For example, which employee within OT is responsible for coordinating with IT security?
It is necessary to define organisational responsibilities in the areas where departments have overlapping roles.
As an example, make sure that the security policy defines who is responsible when IT and OT systems overlap so that security gaps are covered.
3) Legacy: present and future
Clean up your past
Most companies have their eyes set on the future and its possibilities.
Few organisations take time to clean up their past, which in the case of OT security would mean securing legacy systems with vulnerabilities.
Monitor your present
Having secured your legacy systems you should make sure that you have the capability to detect attacks. You can do this by continuously monitoring your OT environment.
Plan for the future
Now that you have secured your past and present, you should prepare your company for the future.
Think about the future developments of your sector, so that you can make an agile plan for your plant that embraces new technologies.
4) Use software to analyse your OT environment
Everything is connected in one way or another. So, you should monitor your OT environment automatically using designated software.
Today, it would be impossible to secure your OT environment without software automatically providing you with an overview of assets, their communication and vulnerabilities, and potential attack vectors.
5) Do the work
Make sure that you do the work required to secure your OT environment.
Analysis won’t help you if you don’t do the work to secure legacy systems, change configurations, update passwords, enforce security policies, etc.
Transparency make OT Security a win-win situation
Make sure your OT security efforts become a win-win situation for your company.
Employing the right transparency tools for your OT environment can bring benefits such as identifying inefficient processes and predicting assets that need maintenance.
This could improve your bottom line and streamline work procedures, as well as improving OT security and the safety of your employees.