Assets and systems within your critical network serve very distinct purposes, right? So, why isn’t there a way to see an impact-centric view of your network within your cyber-physical systems (CPS) security tool?
Enter: Business Impact
Claroty has transformed the way device information and context is identified, evolving beyond what traditional IT or other CPS security tools provide. Typical CPS protection platforms (PP) focus solely on device and asset-centric risk reduction, while Claroty has augmented this perspective, introducing an impact-centric view of your network the way you see it. This approach prioritizes risk reduction efforts based on potential impact to business outcomes, rather than focusing on assets that would have little to no impact on the business if compromised. All while bridging the gap between CPS personnel and other business units.
Impact-centric risk reduction is made possible with the Device Purpose and Risk Benchmarking capabilities now available within The Claroty Platform. As the first of many releases and improvements, these capabilities have allowed for a fundamental shift in the way that security teams approach CPS risk reduction.
Now, let’s dive into the key use cases of these features including how they can help you achieve your organization’s security objectives.
Alleviate Resource Constraints & Focus on What Matters Most
The teams responsible for securing the CPS systems, networks, and assets within your critical infrastructure organization must prioritize their time and resources on the most critical areas of risk to the business. By focusing on assets which pose a higher potential impact on business outcomes, security teams can be confident that their efforts are successful in preventing safety concerns, process disruptions, or unplanned downtime.
Device purpose makes these goals achievable by identifying the systems, networks, and assets of greatest criticality within your organization, whether they are life support machines, processes generating critical resources, or systems responsible for the greatest revenue stream. This capability helps your security team to identify what assets should be prioritized and highly protected. With device purpose, security teams can now effectively prioritize their time and resources to make the greatest business impact.
Similarly, risk benchmarking enables business goals by adding a new level of insights to the current state of your organization’s risk posture against those of a similar size within your industry. This capability delivers a comprehensive analysis of your organization’s security posture by benchmarking against key metrics such as total risk, critical and high-risk devices, and likelihood components, while offering insights into industry averages, best outcomes, and changes over time. It also allows teams to gain a greater understanding of the state of their organization's unique risk posture, allowing them to focus their time and resources on protecting the mission-critical infrastructure that matters most.
Understand Why Alerts Matter
While 95% of CISOs are gaining responsibility for CPS, traditional IT teams don’t have the context or knowledge of OT, IoT, IoMT, or BMS to know how to prioritize CPS-specific risks. CPS protection platforms (PP) typically provide an understanding of assets with in-depth information about a device and any associated risks. Although this is a necessary step in considering risk reduction measures, CISOs require a way to understand what an asset's business impact is so they can understand why an alert matters beyond details of a vulnerability, risky configuration, or a policy deviation.
With Device Purpose, administrators can construct hierarchies and taxonomies, for example, by how devices are organized by site, zone, process area, or more. This allows them to immediately understand the potential business impact of an alert in the CPS environment. Users can also refine hierarchies and taxonomies from a verticalized baseline, including business impact scores to appropriately prioritize fixes.
For example, when a security analyst looks at a list of PLCs with security alerts, the nature of the issue is all they have to go off of when prioritizing remediation. CVEs with the same exploitability score will be remediated in the order that they were found, and CVEs are likely to be addressed before any misconfiguration. However, a misconfiguration in a critical part of the production environment could allow an attacker access and have a far greater impact to the business if abused. Hence why the business context of the asset is so critical to appropriately prioritize security issues.
Making the Shift from Asset-centric to Impact-centric Risk Reduction
Accurately identifying, assessing, and prioritizing risk across connected devices is the foundational aspect of providing an overall view of your organization’s security posture. With more insights and a broader perspective on exposures, security teams have a greater understanding of the state of their organization's unique risk posture.
Claroty’s Device Purpose and Risk Benchmarking capabilities are the first in a shift to add impact-centric CPS protection, enabling security teams to successfully prioritize risk reduction based on potential impact to business outcomes. By providing IT and OT teams with a shared language and mutual understanding of assets, you can finally take the guesswork out of risk reduction.
Don’t be left in the dark when it comes to understanding business impact. Talk to one of our experts today.
