Operational technologies underpin many enterprises, running the gamut from manufacturing to energy to healthcare to transportation. If operational technology grinds to a halt due to a cyber attack, the immediate impact can be dramatic, from lost revenues to even lost human life.  

To help mitigate this risk, the ReliaQuest GreyMatter security operations platform has added support for operational technology environments. Security teams can now deliver security operations across both operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) environments using GreyMatter.  

Operational Technology Defined

The term “operational technology” describes the hardware and software used to monitor and control physical processes, devices, and infrastructure. OT systems performing a variety of tasks that range from monitoring critical infrastructure (CI) to industrial control systems (ICS) on a manufacturing floor. OT is found in various industries, including manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, energy, transportation, and utilities.

Operational Technology and Security Operations

Operational technology security tends to be a distinct security domain, but in recent years, OT and IT security have begun to converge. Cyber threats like ransomware can hop between IT environments and OT engineering workstations, and OT-specific threats attacking the energy sector and industrial control systems are making headlines. What was thought to be air-gapped and isolated OT infrastructure can turn out to have some connection to the internet, and new cyber-physical systems depend on internet connectivity and are subject to the risks that come with that connectivity. Maintaining visibility and managing risk across IT and OT environments is essential for today’s modern enterprise.

GreyMatter for Operational Technology

GreyMatter for Operational Technology alerts on and enables you to understand OT security incidents. By integrating with your organization’s existing OT security tools, GreyMatter provides continuous visibility and delivers unified IT–OT security operations that improves your security team’s efficiency and effectiveness across both IT and OT environments. GreyMatter’s integrations with the OT security ecosystem accelerate investigations to reduce the mean time to resolve (MTTR) incidents. With GreyMatter, you can identify OT security threats, understand context and impact on operations, and make security decisions to control the cyber risk to OT environments.

Identify and Enrich OT Security Incidents

Alerting on and enriching operational technology (OT) security incidents is crucial for maintaining the security and integrity of an organization’s digital assets. GreyMatter’s bi-directional integrations with the OT security ecosystem provide analysts with context around OT security incidents to accelerate response times. Rather than pivoting between consoles, GreyMatter’s API integrations avoid pivoting between consoles, enabling analysts to accelerate investigations with artifacts auto-populated in GreyMatter. The result: improved OT incident investigations that help to drive down MTTR.

Improve OT Visibility

Enterprises want continuous visibility into their OT environment, but may not have configured the OT environment for logging and alerting. OT visibility can be improved with or without an OT security solution. GreyMatter for OT provides continuous monitoring using already-available OT environment logging and alerting within existing infrastructure, allowing you to get visibility into potential cyber threats. Logging can come from systems such as network access controls solutions or engineering/OT host telemetry. Continuous monitoring helps organizations avoid potential disruption of critical OT systems.

Unify IT and OT Security Operations

CIOs and CISOs are realizing that previously isolated OT systems can be vulnerable to internet threats. As the IT and OT environments converge, so too are IT-OT security operations. Having a single security operations platform for both IT and OT provides improved efficiency and reduces MTTR through reduced tool pivots and common processes.

GreyMatter can correlate IT and OT security incidents to deliver a consolidated view across both IT and OT environments. A unified security operations platform for IT and OT environments counters threats that might propagate between IT and OT environments. GreyMatter can provide common escalations for OT and IT threats with OT-specific processes for issues affecting the OT environment.

Learn More

No matter where you are in your operational technology security journey, ReliaQuest can help improve your OT security operations. To learn about how GreyMatter can help you overcome OT security challenges, visit the GreyMatter for Operational Technology webpage or reach out to request a demo.