Industrial Defender

The Future of Asset Management in Operational Technology

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George Kalavantis, COO, Industrial DefenderGeorge Kalavantis, COO
Industrial Defender is one of the first security companies to focus specifically on operational technology (OT) since its founding in 2006. The company has a strong legacy in helping utilities achieve NERC CIP compliance, and expanded upon that value to deliver comprehensive OT asset management across various industrial verticals. These capabilities made Industrial Defender highly sought after by other technology companies, which led to Industrial Defender operating as a subsidiary of other companies for a period of time. Since then, Industrial Defender has returned to a privately-held company as an independent leader in this space, enabling clients to identify, monitor, and manage their OT asset and security data at scale with a single platform.

The company realizes that for a long time, the concept of asset management has been equated with asset discovery, but they are not interchangeable ideas. Asset discovery is all about the passive accumulation of the information needed for OT environments without any kind of agent or agent-based technology. OT asset management is a more comprehensive approach to managing operational technology infrastructure. While asset discovery provides a point-in-time view of the installed base, OT asset management goes beyond this to offer asset context and human intelligence. With Industrial Defender’s platform, operators can collect asset data at a more granular level, including asset details, software patches, users, listening ports, firewall rules, network interfaces, and custom files specific to each asset. By collecting this deep data on the asset, operators get as much asset and operational context as possible. The platform also historizes the data, allowing users to see how the asset has performed over time and track technology changes. With this information, operators can make informed decisions about their installation base. Overall, Industrial Defender's OT asset management approach supports operational outcomes, supporting safety, security, and compliance for critical infrastructure and industrial operators.
“Our focus on asset management enables us to provide foundational security and compliance solutions to our customers,” says George Kalavantis, COO, Industrial Defender.

Typically, Industrial Defender comes across two common industry challenges in the asset management field. First are businesses that usually focus on asset discovery and passive monitoring. They cannot gain a holistic view of their OT landscape since passive monitoring provides a partial understanding of the vulnerabilities. The other companies are the ones that have just started their asset management journey and rely on spreadsheets and very manual, error-prone processes to achieve their goals.

Industrial Defender’s asset management platform automates configuration monitoring, workflow, policy, and reporting management. Organizations can collect data on their OT infrastructure and report on adherence against corporate policies or industry standards, including NERC CIP, IEC 62443, NIS/NIS2 regulations, and AESCSF. In addition, there are provisions for performing root cause analysis for misconfigurations and the ability to detect changes across the infrastructure. It also features an electronic interpretation of company policies and an ad hoc reporting mechanism to ensure their OT infrastructure aligns with the written policies.

Our focus on asset management enables us to provide foundational security and compliance solutions to our customers

For instance, a U.S. green energy provider implemented multiple controls from multiple frameworks, including the NIST CSF or CIS critical security controls, to mitigate cybersecurity risks across their organization. They approached Industrial Defender to assess their implementation and evaluate their performance against these controls. After careful assessment, Industrial Defender implemented its entire solution suite to enable asset and configuration management and user account security. The solution also allowed the client to identify all network misconfigurations and buffer overflow issues.

“Our continuous and constant effort in meeting client needs has helped us retain customers and maintain a worldwide client base,” says Kalavantis.

Industrial Defender has been in the industry for nearly two decades. Its experience in dealing with OT environments and willingness to collect the information required for compliance and standard adherence by any technological means is exceptional. The company is in a relentless endeavor to improve customers’ operational outcomes that make them the go-to partner for asset management.
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Top 10 Utilities Asset Management Solutions Companies - 2023

Company
Industrial Defender

Management
George Kalavantis, COO

Description
Industrial Defender, a leader in OT cybersecurity innovation is an organization that provides a scalable platform to empower security stakeholders with actionable data from their OT and IIoT infrastructure. They enable organizations to make informed risk management decisions and manage their OT cybersecurity program in a concise and single-vendor dashboard.