There is a good reason so many cybersecurity point products emerge in the OT and IT cybersecurity markets. They address and, hopefully, alleviate a clear and present danger. Budget gets allocated for solving problems the C-suite can understand. The problem with these quick fixes is that they are accretive. Old threats seldom ever go away, and they need to be managed like a chronic disease. Pretty soon, the cybersecurity team has two dozen pill vials in its medicine drawer and keeping track of each of them and managing the overall health of the organization is a serious challenge.
This proliferation of point solutions is common in many organizations and creates serious pain points for operations and security teams because each solution can come with its own agents and management console, with each introducing possible negative interactions when used in combination on the same infrastructure. Not to mention the accumulative effect on the teams tasked with managing these OT security products. There are several ways to reduce this accumulating problem. The two most obvious are to consolidate functionality into a platform or to offload functionality to a service provider.
Benefits of Consolidation
A platform approach to OT cybersecurity solutions can alleviate many of these potential problems by simplifying the deployment, management, and maintenance of these products. Platforms can reduce operational fatigue on cybersecurity teams and significantly reduce false positives from individual point products. OT cybersecurity platforms can also provide the centralized management required to effectively integrate into IT systems such as SOCs, ticketing systems, or SIEM Solutions.
New threats introduced by new connectivity into the OT environment and integration with enterprise business systems have led to a proliferation of available OT cybersecurity solutions. This development is driving the introduction of platforms with bundled functionality that manages and delivers core OT cybersecurity.
