Siemens and PAS Global announced an agreement to provide fleet-wide, real time monitoring for control systems. By leveraging the unique capabilities of both companies, this partnership will provide customers with: (i) deep analytics required to identify and inventory proprietary assets; and (ii) visibility to detect and respond effectively to attacks across the operating environment.
As the oil and gas sector becomes increasingly digital to achieve revenue and efficiency gains, there is a corresponding need to identify cyber threats at their earliest stages – going beyond compliance regulations to secure operations. Organisations in these sectors must defend their entire digital footprint against persistent and highly sophisticated cyber threats without disrupting business processes.
According to recent research conducted by the Ponemon Institute on the state of cyber security in the US oil and gas industry, deployment of cyber security measures in the industry is not keeping pace with the growth of digitalisation in oil and gas operations.
Just 35% of survey respondents rate their organisation’s OT (operational technology) cyber readiness as high. Sixty-eight per cent of respondents say their organisation experienced at least one cyber compromise, while 61% say their organisation’s industrial control systems (ICS) protection and security is not adequate.
Focused on gathering detailed configuration data down to the sensor, the Siemens-PAS partnership will enable customers to secure proprietary systems in multi-vendor environments – guarding against cyber-attacks as well as unauthorised engineering changes.
As an industrial technology provider for more than 165 years, Siemens has an inherent and holistic understanding of how to manage cyber risk in complex operating environments. A leader in the OT industry, Siemens brings to the partnership deep domain know-how and solutions for OT cyber, including security programme design, security lifecycle management, plant security monitoring, and incident response.
For more than two decades, PAS has solved operational and security challenges for leading chemical, refining and power companies across the globe. Its best-in-class Cyber Integrity™ solution provides foundational inventory management that covers all the major cyber assets found in plants today.
The solution detects new or missing devices, aggregates configuration data at the asset level, baselines security-related data to monitor for change, and captures system interdependencies.
“Utilities and the oil and gas sector confront sophisticated, persistent and aggressive cyber threats in the operational environment. Enhanced fleet-wide visibility is critical to detecting attacks and anomalies at the earliest possible stage,” said Leo Simonovich, vice president, global cyber security, Siemens.
