Siemens and Tenable team up to secure critical infrastructure

Siemens has teamed with cyber exposure firm Tenable Inc. to help energy, utilities and oil & gas companies close the industry readiness gap with a new solution for industrial asset discovery and vulnerability management. At a time when the risk of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure has grown exponentially, the strategic partnership will see the launch of ‘Industrial Security’ from Tenable, which Siemens is delivering as a service to help companies secure and protect their critical operational technology (OT) assets.

“Organisations running operational technology face a foundational security challenge – the need to understand the entirety of their cyber exposure in the context of a modern attack surface that is constantly evolving,” said Amit Yoran, CEO of Tenable. “We’ve seen the rise of cloud, mobile and IoT and now the convergence of IT with OT, which have made critical systems vulnerable to increasingly aggressive adversaries and attacks.” Mr Yoran remarked that Tenable is the only company that can help organisations to close the cyber exposure gap from traditional IT to cloud, from IoT to OT assets. “Joining forces with Siemens is a natural next step and together we provide a way for organisations to monitor and address their attack surface in totality, so they can see where they are vulnerable and protect those systems – and the people who depend on them – from threats.”

The stakes have never been higher when it comes to cyber-security for critical infrastructure. The number of cyber-attacks worldwide continues to grow, with OT becoming a growing target (now comprising 30 per cent of all cyber-attacks, with a major impact on productivity, uptime, efficiency and safety, according to recent research conducted by Ponemon Institute on the state of cyber-security in the US oil & gas industry. The deployment of cyber-security measures isn’t keeping pace with the growth of digitalisation in oil & gas operations and the inability to accurately understand and represent cyber risk at any given time creates a massive cyber exposure gap.

“Cyberattacks against the O&G and utilities sector are on the rise and growing more sophisticated and aggressive by the day,” warned Leo Simonovich, Vice President and Global Head of Industrial Cyber and Digital Security at Siemens Energy. “Passive monitoring of all assets in these systems is critical to detecting and addressing vulnerabilities before they can be exploited and lead to disruption of essential public services like electricity, gas, and water.” 

Delivered by Siemens as a security service, Industrial Security helps customers understand the state of their assets at all times, providing them with the information they need to quickly and confidently assess, understand and ultimately reduce their cyber-security risk. With Tenable, organisations for the first time can implement a single solution to assess Cyber Exposure across the entire modern attack surface, spanning both traditional IT and OT assets.