The need to secure Industrial Control Systems (ICS) has never been more acute, given the widespread and growing risk of cyber threats.
In fact, a recent report by EEF and AIG on cybersecurity for manufacturers found that 41% of companies do not believe they have access to enough information to even assess their true cyber risk.
One of the reasons? Many ICS networks lack a critical security capability — automated asset management. This is not surprising, since ICSs were designed and implemented decades ago, when cybercrime didn’t exist and these systems were isolated and segregated from the rest of the network.
Without an up-to-date and accurate inventory of ICS assets, including the automation controllers responsible for managing physical processes, it is virtually impossible to assess risk and apply effective defenses.
Moreover, automated asset management is important for operational reliability and safety, as it enables managers to track changes made to devices, prioritize threat mitigation efforts, restore misconfigured devices to a “known good” state, and plan maintenance and replacement schedules. Why is automated asset management is vital to ICS…
