Over the past several decades, manufacturers have been pressured to adopt more connected and smarter technologies to optimize their operations and business. In parallel, the severity of cyber threats have been drastically increasing, and the result is leaving manufacturers in a difficult position. The widespread adoption of enhanced connectivity is all but assured but doing so brings new cybersecurity risk to the business. The question becomes, how are those risks best managed while pursuing digital transformation?

Use a Risk-Based Approach

The ultimate goal of ICS Cybersecurity is to reduce the risk to the business to a level which is acceptable to the business. Doing this requires first quantifying the organization’s level of acceptable risk (performed by corporate), then identifying the risk each facility’s OT environment is carrying (performed at site), then implementing security controls to reduce each facility’s risk to meet the acceptable level.

Risk Management Cycle Infographic

Identify What You’re Protecting

The axiom that “you cannot protect what you cannot see” is a popular one in the cybersecurity industry, and is equally true for ICS Cybersecurity. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework begins with the functional category “Identify”. For many, understanding existing data is the first order of business.

ICS Cybersecurity Plan Infographic

Apply Security Controls Uniformly

Different facilities – and even different industrial systems within each facility – pose varying levels of cybersecurity risk to the business. It’s critical that the governance framework provides a means to apply greater security controls to systems which pose higher risk , and fewer security controls to systems which pose lower risk. In this way, investment can be made where it’s most impactful and ROI maximized.

Determining Required Security Level Infographic

Leverage Grantek to Secure Your Infrastructure

Grantek’s ICS Cybersecurity services are designed to develop a framework for quantifying and applying security controls to the industrial environment where they’re most needed.

Industrial IT Infographic

Read About Grantek’s Approach

Click Here to read Grantek’s Industrial IT & Cybersecurity article about the role Industrial IT infrastructure plays in the Digital Transformation of the manufacturing industry. This article appeared in ANSI‘s USNC Current.

USNC PDF

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