Efficient Plant May 2021 - 22

cybersecurity

Protect Your
OT Systems
THE PANDEMIC HAS forced organizations to rethink traditional work environments and many employers are seeing the benefits
of a remote workforce. In a recent forecast, Global Workplace
Analytics (San Diego, globalworkplaceanalytics.com) predicted
that by 2022, 25% to 30% of employees will be working remotely
multiple days a week.
Whether you call it smartwork or homework, it's a trend that's
likely to stick around. In the United States, pre-coronavirus, 3.6%
of employees worked from home half or more of the time, while
80% would prefer to work remotely at least sometimes.
While this sounds great for employees, all is not so rosy for
employers. The chief information security officers (CISO) responsible for the resilience of operational technology (OT) systems now
face an even greater dilemma: How do they keep critical systems
operating 24/7 when employees are encouraged or mandated to
work from home, and are highly dependent on secure connectivity
to function normally?
Much of the answer lies in opening up systems that are traditionally closed to the outside world to allow remote management.
To achieve this, CISOs need to balance safety, productivity, and
cybersecurity risk. Even the slightest oversight can open the door
to cyber risks, and potentially cause harm to employees, company
reputation, and revenue.
The large number of open connections from remote workers
back to the enterprise or OT systems introduces cyber risks. Some
corporate leaders may not be prioritizing cybersecurity as they
scramble to keep their businesses running; not realizing that threat
activities carry on-and are sometimes heightened-during times
of crisis.

This article is an excerpt from the blog post The Remote Access
Genie is Out of the Bottle-Protect Your OT Systems, by
Patrick Bedwell, Sr. Director Product and Partner Marketing at Nozomi
Networks, San Francisco. For more information about IT and OT
network solutions, visit nozominetworks.com.

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EP2105rmcnozomi.indd 22

Providing remote workers with the access they need to IT and OT systems presents several challenges for those responsible for network security.

Here are some of our recommendations to strengthen an organization's
security posture when exposed by a sudden increase of employees
working from home:

INCREASE VISIBILITY into the OT environment by using

passive traffic monitoring to identify and baseline critical assets and
operational states.

BOLSTER DETECTION CAPABILITIES with anomalydetection technology in IT and OT environments.

APPLY A HEALTH CHECK to network infrastructure and
ensure correct network segregation and firewall policies are in place.

ENSURE ALL DEVICES AND SERVICES ARE
PATCHED. It's also important to shorten patch cycles, particularly
for those that protect remote infrastructure. Where appropriate, use
virtual patching to complement existing patching processes until a
permanent patch can be implemented.

DEPLOY A RESILIENT BACKUP POLICY that supports
quick access to affected files.

PERFORM ASSET HARDENING to disable services used
by ransomware for propagation. EP
MAY 2021

4/26/21 9:31 AM

http://www.globalworkplaceanalytics.com http://www.nozominetworks.com http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

Efficient Plant May 2021

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