Why IT is the Key to OT Organizations' Success?
As Industry, Manufacturing, Energy & Utilities, Transportation Systems, and Building Automation Systems are modernized - there is a fundamental shift toward integrating and implementing IT within OT Systems.
In today's environment, interconnection is crucial; especially with the high demand for comprehensive data extraction and collection. In order to make better business decisions and ensure systems are streamlined OT Systems need, OT Security, to be protected and secured from risk.
Traditionally OT Systems follow "implicit trust" models, in which security is only based on factors like physical location, device, and IP. Worryingly, most systems today still deploy security in this manner.
With growing attack surfaces - that, ultimately, increase risk to the operations of OT organizations - it's more important than ever to implore a "explicit trust" or "Zero Trust" security approach. With this approach, security is based on a multitude of factors, from location to learned user behavior.
In today's environment, interconnection is crucial; especially with the high demand for comprehensive data extraction and collection. In order to make better business decisions and ensure systems are streamlined OT Systems need, OT Security, to be protected and secured from risk.
Traditionally OT Systems follow "implicit trust" models, in which security is only based on factors like physical location, device, and IP. Worryingly, most systems today still deploy security in this manner.
With growing attack surfaces - that, ultimately, increase risk to the operations of OT organizations - it's more important than ever to employer a "explicit trust" or "Zero Trust" security approach. With this approach, security is based on a multitude of factors, from location to learned user behavior.
In order to remain competitive, organizations need to invest in modernized systems, regardless of their size.
To propel systems toward "Industry 4.0" or, in other words, "Digitization from Supply chain to Customer Experiences" - investments need to be made to revitalize IT Systems. By doing so, organizations will yield clear gains and operational efficiency, all while offsetting the greater risk to cyber exposure of the organization.
As the organization invests within operational efficiency it must take in account cyber exposure by implementing architectural approaches that design security-in, while taking into consideration a platform based approach, MESH Architecture to ensure timely and appropriate response to the risk.
I'd like to invite you to join, myself, Foad Godarzy and the rest of the Operational Technology and Critical Infrastructure team, June 15th, as we demonstrate our Subject Matter Expertise within Securing Industry.
We will start with an overview of one such architectural approach to secure not only OT, but also IT, and the complete Enterprise with the Fortinet Fabric. We will demonstrate, after gaining common ground with the audience on the architecture used, three demo examples on how aspects of the Fortinet Fabric will protect an Enterprise under Attack, allowing for the domain experts within the business to respond to the risk.
Written by:
Foad Godarzy - Sr. Director, Operational Technologies
Foad Godarzy is the Senior Director of Operational Technologies at Fortinet Canada, responsible for the strategic direction, vision, growth and performance of the OT practice in Canada.
As a seasoned technology executive leader with more than 20 years of technology and information security experience, he is known for driving architecture, development, implementation and securing of a wide variety of IT and OT infrastructures with medium and large organizations.