Digital transformation across manufacturing industries has enhanced resilience in production, streamlined operations, and resulted in greater efficiencies than previously imagined before. However, in complex cyber-physical environments greater connectivity also expands the attack surface for cyber incidents that can lead to production-disrupting downtime. Improving resilience in production is key to maintaining business continuity, maintaining physical safety, and protecting critical assets from physical and cyber threats.
Learn how resilience in production can be protected and maintained through an integration of asset management and cybersecurity tailored to the cyber-physical systems (CPS), consisting of the OT/IOT/IOMT/IT present in the manufacturing environment where the IT/OT convergence has accelerated in recent years. Understand how present challenges can be addressed in order to reap the benefits and business values of digital transformation and operational resilience.
What is Resilience in Production?
In the manufacturing industry resilience in production refers to operating with the utmost productivity and efficiency with limited downtime. A large part of improving resilience in production is enhanced equipment effectiveness to ensure equipment works when it should so unplanned downtime is minimized. Maintaining preventive maintenance and quickly attending to reactive maintenance is key for protecting financial interests while minimizing risks and prioritizing stability in production.
However, equipment effectiveness refers not only to the physical maintenance of equipment but also digital maintenance, which ensures that equipment is properly protected from cyber risks and the chance of unplanned downtime as a result of a cyber incident. Enforcing cybersecurity measures for CPS is a core aspect of resilience in production that aims to maintain your security posture, defend against incidents that could lead to unplanned downtime, and perhaps most importantly, protect the bottom line, as the costs associated with unplanned downtime are soaring.
Asset intensive manufacturing industries, like automotive or oil and gas, must have a strong defense for CPS in addition to robust asset maintenance to preserve equipment effectiveness and resilience in production.
Key Challenges of Maintaining OT Production and CPS
Implementing a comprehensive CPS protection strategy is not as easy as flipping a switch. There are several challenges that manufacturing companies face in their journey to maintaining OT production while securing CPS.
The first is an incomplete OT asset inventory. Without a full inventory of every OT/IoT asset that must be secured, it’s impossible to be sure that every device is secured - you can’t protect the assets you don’t have a record of.
Similarly, exposures and network blindspots open your environment up to risks. Exposures open pathways for threat actors to access your CPS environment. In fact, according to Claroty’s Global State of CPS Security reports, 49% of CPS organizations experienced 12 or more hours of downtime due to a cyber attack and 67% incurred at least $100,000 in financial impact due to a cyber incident. Having a handle on which assets may have known exposures and understanding any blind spots on your network can help your business stay ahead of risk and minimize your attack surface. Without comprehensive visibility into assets in your environment and a way to identify, prioritize and remediate exposures, you risk opening up your business to costly production downtime.
Finally, gaps in threat detection and Security Operations (SecOps) can leave your business blind to evolving risks. Proactive, continuous monitoring is essential to stay ahead of threats and protect your most critical assets.
The Value of Asset Management and Cybersecurity Integration
Achieving resilience in production requires both asset management and comprehensive cybersecurity for CPS. In fact, the first step to effective CPS protection is asset management. Without it, implementing exposure management, threat detection, and SecOps isn’t feasible. Knowing every internet-connected asset on your network, including the make, model, operating system, and device purpose gives you the information you need to properly protect your assets and stay ahead of potential risks to your network.
The business value of comprehensive asset management and cybersecurity cannot be overstated. As previously mentioned, the cost of unplanned downtime is rising in manufacturing. Having a complete asset inventory is key for staying on top of predictive maintenance and early failure detection while also ensuring consistent production through cybersecurity measures. Maintaining assets also extends the lifespan of critical infrastructure, ensuring uninterrupted operations during system transitions and managing modern threats appropriately. Finally, minimizing safety risk in the workplace must be considered as a priority. With swift incident response and effective recovery processes, you can safeguard the reputation of your business while protecting the health and safety of your workforce.
Better Together: Claroty and IBM Maximo
Claroty xDome and IBM Maximo Application Suite can be integrated to provide unparalleled OT security, asset management, and operational visibility.
Claroty xDome, a purpose built cyber-physical systems (CPS) protection platform, offers state of the art visibility for OT networks, including identification of OT devices, protocols, vulnerabilities, and threats, along with OT activity alerts (online edits / config uploads). Simultaneously, the Maximo Application Suite provides robust asset management capabilities, covering asset health, predictive maintenance, visual/audio asset inspection, health, safety, environment considerations, and spare parts inventory.
Working towards resilience in production through an asset management and cybersecurity solution can save your business from unplanned downtime and financial losses as a result of cyber attacks. This is why implementing a solution like IBM Maximo IT as part of the IBM Maximo Application Suite (MAS) for asset management and Claroty for CPS protection can be an invaluable step to preserving operational resilience and equipment efficiency.
How do IBM Maximo and Claroty work in tandem to protect CPS, maintain your asset inventory, and ultimately protect your business’s production and financial interests? These core use cases illustrate how manufacturing entities can reap the benefits of the integration while achieving resilience in production:
1. Automatic Asset Population
Claroty utilizes dynamic discovery methods for CPS devices, automatically populating IBM Maximo with a complete, up-to-date asset inventory across IT and OT environments. This includes key asset information like make, model, and operating system of the device, eliminating blind spots and ensuring accurate data for downstream processes.
2. Improved Device and Lifecycle Management
Organizations utilizing Claroty’s comprehensive asset visibility integrating with IBM Maximo, are able to better manage devices throughout their lifecycle—enhancing maintenance planning, patch management, and overall operational oversight.
3. Workflow Automation for Remediation and Response
Vulnerability remediation, threat intelligence alerting, and incident response are streamlined through the contextual data Claroty provides to create and trigger ticketing workflows in IBM Maximo, improving security and operational processes.
4. Enhanced IT/OT Collaboration
Integrating Claroty and IBM Maximo for better visibility and workflow integration allowed IT and OT teams to communicate more cohesively, share accountability, and reach faster issue resolution.
5. Stronger Cyber and Operational Resilience
By embedding security into daily operations, the integration between Claroty and IBM Maximo offers a unified platform for security and reliability teams to detect, respond to, and recover from threats, ultimately leading to a stronger defense across critical environments.
To better protect the CPS your business relies on day in and day out to maintain production, implementing an integration of asset management and cybersecurity like Claroty and IBM Maximo is a key step to avoiding costly downtime or business disruption. Discover the power of digital transformation while protecting your most critical assets with Claroty and IBM Maximo.
To learn more about this integration, visit the IBM Booth #5871 at RSA and Claroty at the B-Restaurant at 720 Howard Street (across the street from the Mascone Convention Center).
