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The manufacturing sector is rife with unprotected Web of Issues (IoT) sensors and units, a lot of them built-in into enterprises’ mission-critical methods. The ensuing gaps make operations expertise (OT) and knowledge expertise (IT) networks susceptible to devastating cyberattacks.
Visibility is vital. Shivan Mandalam, director of product administration, IoT safety at CrowdStrike, advised VentureBeat that “it’s important for organizations to remove blindspots related to unmanaged or unsupported legacy methods. With larger visibility and evaluation throughout IT and OT methods, safety groups can shortly establish and tackle issues earlier than adversaries exploit them.”
Honeywell’s acquisition of Israel-based SCADAfence, a number one supplier of OT and IoT cybersecurity options, is only one instance of the manufacturing business making an attempt to catch up, shut these gaps and defend in opposition to growing numbers of ransomware assaults.
Manufacturing: An business underneath siege
Something that stops a store flooring from working can shortly value a enterprise thousands and thousands. That’s why ransomware assaults on producers generate thousands and thousands of {dollars} in payouts. A whole bunch of producers pay ransomware calls for with out disclosing the very fact to clients.
Gartner predicts that the monetary impression of cyber-physical system (CPS) assaults will attain over $50 billion by 2023. Restoration from a typical manufacturing breach prices $2.8 million. Not solely that: Almost 9 in 10 producers which have suffered a ransomware assault or breach have additionally had their supply chains disrupted.
Honeywell acquires SCADAfence to shut the hole
Honeywell’s SCADAfence acquisition supplies the manufacturing big “with extra expertise and experience that assist speed up our innovation roadmap … and assist quickly evolving buyer necessities,” mentioned Michael Ruiz, GM of Honeywell Cybersecurity Services, in a current interview with VentureBeat.
The acquisition will ship an built-in platform to producers, course of industries, and infrastructure suppliers at a time when assaults are escalating.
“SCADAfence is a perfect complement to Honeywell’s OT cybersecurity portfolio, and when mixed with the Honeywell Forge Cybersecurity+ suite, it allows us to offer an end-to-end resolution with applicability to asset, website and enterprise throughout key Honeywell sectors,” Ruiz mentioned.
Key focus areas embody asset discovery, risk detection and compliance administration, Ruiz advised VentureBeat. “Our plan is to have the SCADAfence product portfolio combine into the Honeywell Forge Cybersecurity+ suite inside Honeywell Linked Enterprise, Honeywell’s fast-growing software program arm with a strategic give attention to digitalization, sustainability and OT cybersecurity SaaS choices and options.”
Identified for its course of evaluation and integration experience, Honeywell is concentrating on the way it can take advantage of its strengths in these areas and obtain scale shortly with the brand new acquisition. “This integration will allow Honeywell to offer an end-to-end enterprise OT cybersecurity resolution to website managers, operations administration and CISOs searching for enterprise safety administration and situational consciousness,” mentioned Ruiz.
SCADAfence CEO Elad Ben Meir additionally commented on the synergies between the businesses. “We’re thrilled to affix Honeywell as we work in direction of fulfilling our mission of empowering industrial organizations to function securely, reliably and effectively,” Ben Meir mentioned in a press launch. “This mixture creates a big alternative for development, permitting us to mix our top-tier OT cybersecurity merchandise with one of many world’s main firms in industrial software program.”
The deal expands Honeywell’s cybersecurity middle of excellence in Tel Aviv, the place SCADAfence is headquartered. Ruiz advised VentureBeat that one of the vital precious features of the acquisition is that Honeywell will have the ability to “almost double our analysis and growth for OT cybersecurity, in all probability turning into one of many bigger OT cybersecurity analysis and growth organizations on the market.”
Why Honeywell moved to amass SCADAfence
The IBM Security X-Force Threat Intelligence Index discovered that manufacturing is essentially the most attacked business worldwide: The sector accounted for 23% of all ransomware assaults final yr. Greater than six in 10 breach makes an attempt on producers first focused OT methods important to manufacturing operations.
Analysis agency Dragos predicts that ransomware assaults on industrial organizations will speed up this yr. Dragos’ most up-to-date Industrial Ransomware Attack Analysis, from Q2 2023, discovered that 47.5% of ransomware assaults tracked globally impacted industrial organizations and infrastructure in North America, a rise of 27% over the past quarter.
All advised, seven out of 10 ransomware assaults in Q2 had been aimed toward manufacturing, adopted by the economic management methods (ICS) tools and engineering sector, the place 16% of assaults occurred.
The speedy rise in Fileless malware attacks displays this development. Fileless malware is designed to evade detection by cloaking its presence utilizing professional instruments. CrowdStrike’s Kurt Baker, senior director of product advertising for CrowdStrike Falcon Intelligence, writes that “fileless malware is a sort of malicious exercise that makes use of native, professional instruments constructed right into a system to execute a cyber-attack. Not like conventional malware, fileless malware doesn’t require an attacker to put in any code on a goal’s system, making it onerous to detect. This fileless strategy of utilizing native instruments to conduct a malicious assault is typically known as living off the land or LOLbins.”
Closing OT/IoT blind spots
Safety suppliers are upping their video games.
Final yr at Fal.Con 2022, CrowdStrike augmented Falcon Perception, launching Falcon Insight XDR and Falcon Discover for IoT that focus on safety gaps in and between industrial management methods (ICSs).
Ivanti, for its half, has efficiently launched 4 options for IoT safety: Ivanti Neurons for RBVM, Ivanti Neurons for UEM, Ivanti Neurons for Healthcare, which helps the Web of Medical Issues (IoMT), and Ivanti Neurons for IIoT based mostly on the corporate’s Wavelink acquisition, which secures Industrial Web of Issues (IIoT) networks.
Different main suppliers providing IoT cybersecurity options embody AirGap Networks, Absolute Software program, Armis, Broadcom, Cisco, CradlePoint, CrowdStrike, Entrust, Forescout, Fortinet, Ivanti, JFrog and Rapid7.
AI and cybersecurity
Airgap Networks has created one of the vital modern approaches to closing the OT-IT hole. Its Zero Trust Firewall (ZTFW) combines agentless microsegmentation, safe entry for important property, and community and asset intelligence. Airgap’s distinctive strategy supplies its clients with the choice of totally segmenting legacy servers, ICS, IoT and personal 5G endpoints. The platform can even combine right into a operating community with out brokers, {hardware} upgrades or main system modifications.
VentureBeat interviewed Ritesh Agrawal, CEO of Airgap Networks, instantly following its launch of ThreatGPT, the corporate’s ChatGPT integration with the Airgap Zero Belief Firewall. Agrawal advised VentureBeat, “As a result of ThreatGPT is totally built-in into the core of the ZTFW structure, our clients can use all obtainable knowledge to coach the fashions. I consider we’re first to market with this.”
ThreatGPT makes use of graph databases and GPT-3 fashions to assist SecOps groups acquire new risk insights. The GPT-3 fashions analyze pure language queries and establish safety threats, whereas graph databases present contextual intelligence on endpoint visitors relationships.
Agrawal advised VentureBeat that “IoT places a whole lot of strain on enterprise safety maturity. Extending zero belief to IoT is tough as a result of the endpoints differ, and the surroundings is dynamic and crammed with legacy units.”
Requested how producers and different high-risk business targets may get began, Agrawal suggested that “correct asset discovery, microsegmentation and id are nonetheless the appropriate reply, however deploy them with conventional options when most IoT units can’t settle for brokers? That is why many enterprises embrace agentless cybersecurity like Airgap as the one workable structure for IoT and IoMT.”