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Rockwell Automation Offers New Resources to Help Customers Adopt a More Proactive Cybersecurity Approach

November 13, 2021 by Alessandro Mascellino

Rockwell Automation has unveiled new initiatives and partnerships aimed at improving its operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) and cybersecurity offering.

The company will now start separate collaborations with Dragos and CrowdStrike and establish a new Cybersecurity Operations Center in Israel.

 

Rockwell’s headquarters. Image used courtesy of Rockwell Automation

 

According to Rachael Conrad, Vice President and General Manager of Global Services at Rockwell Automation, the new efforts will help the company implement strong cybersecurity across its whole offering.

 

IT & OT Security in Industrial Automation

IT refers to technologies used for monitoring, managing, and securing core functions like email, finance, and other applications, both at the data center level and in the cloud. OT, on the other hand, is a term used to describe equipment specialized in connecting, monitoring, managing, and securing an organization's industrial operations. 

The technology includes robots, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, industrial control systems (ICS), programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and computer numerical control (CNC). 

IT and OT systems are today often used together in industrial scenarios. While combining IT and OT could mean better data visibility and utilization and full realization of system and software return on investment, IT/OT convergence also presents new issues related to cybersecurity policies and network maintenance.

If these issues are not addressed, they may lead to vulnerabilities that can potentially be exploited by malicious actors.

 

Rockwell’s New Cybersecurity Efforts

To strengthen companies’ cybersecurity posture, Rockwell recently partnered with Dragos. The collaboration will focus on incident response services and threat intelligence for industrial control systems (ICS)/OT environments.

“Our investment and partnership with Dragos will help our industrial automation customers achieve their connected enterprise by providing a safe and secure OT infrastructure,” Conrad explained.

Rockwell has also joined forces with CrowdStrike, a cloud-delivered endpoint and workload protection company.

The partnership will integrate CrowdStrike’s cloud-native, AI-powered Falcon platform within Rockwell’s global ecosystem, enhancing its network architecture, deployment, OT, and managed services capabilities.

 

CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform. Image used courtesy of CrowdStrike
 

 

“Rockwell’s partnership with CrowdStrike enables us to provide fully integrated, end-to-end industrial security services and solutions across the entire customer cybersecurity journey, from threat detection through response and recovery from cyber incidents,” Conrad added.

Combining CrowdStrike’s endpoint protection platform and Rockwell’s integrated security products and services could enable customers access to comprehensive security infrastructure. Rockwell recently established a new Cybersecurity Operations Center in the Metropolitan Area of Tel Aviv, Israel.

The facility started operations on November 1 and will reportedly deliver remote cybersecurity services to Rockwell’s global customer base. The new center is now part of a network that counts 15 remote service centers around the world.

The new cybersecurity initiatives fit into a wider picture for Rockwell, with the company acquiring security firm Avnet in January 2020, and expanding its industrial cybersecurity products last December.

What do you think about Rockwell’s new cybersecurity efforts? Let us know in the comments section down below.