ForeScout deepens visibility into OT networks with industrial system integrations

Internet of things (IoT) security company ForeScout Technologies announced partnerships with Indegy and SecurityMatters to integrate these technologies into its visibility platform and secure operational technology (OT) and industrial environments.

With this new category of industrial control system (ICS) partnerships, ForeScout continues with its strategy to provide visibility across the extended enterprise – from campus, data center, cloud to OT networks.  "The essential systems that are foundational to a nation's economy, security and health are being connected to IT systems and becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats," says ForeScout chief strategy officer Pedro Abreu.

"Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure introduce dangerous risks that go beyond financial loss or business disruption, and can threaten physical safety," he says.

As operational and industrial control systems connect to IT environments, it's critical for organisations to build and maintain an asset inventory of every device in every ICS layer and ensure compliance with industry regulations and security standards.

However, ICS devices create unique challenges for organisations because most cannot support traditional security methods, and are sensitive to legacy scanning and monitoring techniques.

Also, given the importance of critical infrastructure, many of these devices cannot be taken offline for maintenance and patching.  ForeScout's agentless visibility and control solution provides comprehensive inventory and device compliance capabilities for network-connected devices.

By partnering with Indegy and SecurityMatters, ForeScout now offers deeper visibility into every layer of ICS environments, including SCADA systems, programmable logic controllers (PLC) and sensors.

With partners sharing device data, ForeScout consolidates governance to deliver visibility and control of all ICS and IT assets while enabling device compliance, incident detection and response, and effective risk mitigation across the entire environment.  According to a May 2018 Gartner report by Saniye Burcu Alaybeyi, 2018 Strategic Roadmap for Integrated IT and OT Security, "OT networks have been unmanaged, from a security and risk perspective, for many years.

"They are flat, with a mix of OT protocols, unidentified assets, legacy systems and devices with unsecure communications... Successful security governance in an integrated IT/OT environment must be able to balance enterprise-wide objectives with the combined risk appetite and the capability to secure and protect the two domains."  Leveraging insights from our partnerships with Indegy and SecurityMatters, ForeScout delivers the following integrated security capabilities across IT, OT and critical infrastructure environments:  •  End-to-end agentless visibility and security  •  Automated asset discovery and management  •  Real-time threat detection and contextual alerts  •  Continuous validation of asset configurations and compliance  •  Deeper incident response and threat mitigation  ForeScout integrations for Indegy and SecurityMatters are generally available now.