The convergence of Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) has disrupted industries across the globe. However, today’s threat landscape coupled with the developing force of AI have introduced new security challenges—particularly in the realm of industrial processes and critical infrastructure.

 

As a follow up to our announcement at RSA in April, we take a closer look at how security teams can utilize Microsoft Defender XDR to protect OT environments from emerging threats and ensure their safety, productivity, and reliability.

 

Why yesterday's OT security is no longer enough

 

As a vital part of business processes, Operational Technology—or Cyber Physical Systems (CPS)—are used either directly or indirectly to control and monitor business critical and business supporting systems. The use of these systems has become an integral part of business for all verticals, like manufacturing, transportation, energy production, and healthcare, which rely on technology to deliver value and operate assistive systems such as building management, safety, and physical security.

 

Industry 4.0—the fourth industrial revolution—has brought automation and new technologies that significantly increase OT connectivity, introducing new cybersecurity risks. Traditional defenses of the past are no longer sufficient to protect against evolving threats targeting OT environments. In addition, organizational silos and fragmented defenses in OT have slowed incident response and led many organizations to have only limited visibility. And point solutions that operate in isolation have contributed to data silos that hinder a unified response—particularly when incidents span IT and OT boundaries. A paradigm shift in OT security is essential to address these challenges effectively.

 

Microsoft Defender XDR transforms OT security

 

With the integration of Microsoft Defender for IoT as a native component in our XDR, we provide comprehensive protection for operational technology (OT) environments and address the unique cybersecurity challenges faced by organizations across OT industries.

 

Together, Microsoft Defender XDR and Defender for IoT are reducing the barriers for securing OT environments and enabling the SOC to become a fully functional IT/OT SOC. By replacing disconnected tools and fragmented analyst experiences with a streamlined platform that breaks down the silos between IT and OT environments, security teams are now equipped with the right set of tools to address their evolving OT threat landscape.

 

As part of the release, the following capabilities are now available:

 

1. Microsoft Defender for Endpoints delivers out-of-the-box, agentless discovery for all devices and environments – By leveraging Defender for Endpoint and augmenting with network sensors, security teams can discover and secure all networked devices on a global scale in both IT and OT environments. OT environments can be fully covered and well secured in a short time frame, resulting in the industry's lowest total cost of ownership.

 

Figure 1: Unified inventory within Defender XDR

 

2. IT/OT Unified incident management – Defender XDR protects organizations in digital transformation against sophisticated attacks by combining data from IT and OT into one cross-workload incident, detecting lateral movement across the customer environments. The security team can point out how a threat enters the environment, what it affects, and how it impacts the environment right now—including when unauthorized access occurs to lifesaving systems or when process control systems are tampered with.

 

Figure 2: Unified incident response within Defender XDR

 

 

3. Physical site security – OT assets represent actual assets that reside in a physical location, on-site and involved with a physical process. A new construct in the Defender Portal for physical sites and production facilities enables security teams to connect business impact with security in the organization by associating all on-site assets and systems with organizational structure and operations.  The correlation introduces an additional layer of contextualization for all assets in the “unified inventory" allowing security teams to prioritize security events based on their impact on the business, ensuring the most critical threats are addressed promptly.
   
   Figure 3: Managing security at the facility level with Defender XDR

    

4. Unified vulnerability management for IT and OT – OT security posture and vulnerability management are integrated into Defender XDR, allowing security teams to model security risks in a targeted and efficient manner based on a single unified source of threat intelligence.  

 

5. Proactive, risk-based vulnerability management – Security teams can take advantage of the built-in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management (MDVM), which covers the end-to-end VRM lifecycle for identifying, assessing, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities across platforms and workloads.  Security teams utilize context-aware, risk-based priority predictions and business contexts to prioritize vulnerabilities across their managed and unmanaged portfolio.

 

6. Microsoft Copilot for Security in OT environments – Security teams can now leverage the power of Copilot for Security to democratize OT security and help bridge the knowledge gap required to effectively investigate and remediate OT security threats. Copilot for Security helps and guides security team response to OT incidents and reduces time to resolve when every minute counts.

 

The benefits of extending XDR to protect against OT threats

 

In this blog post, we discussed how integrating OT security into your XDR strategy can help you better secure your entire digital landscape. Microsoft Defender XDR enables you to manage both IT and OT security from a single platform, reducing complexity and costs. It also helps you achieve faster time-to-value for OT security by leveraging your existing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint deployment and network discovery capabilities. Moreover, Defender XDR enhances your threat detection and response across IT and OT domains by applying Microsoft's vast threat intelligence network and behavioral analytics, and lastly Microsoft's vast threat intelligence enables you to detect threat actor Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and to match them with real-time behaviors to identify attacks on cross IT/OT infrastructure. With Microsoft Defender XDR, you can stay ahead of cybercriminals and protect your systems and data in real-time.

 

Are you ready to get started?

 

Replace disconnected tools and fragmented experiences with a streamlined platform to ease work and eliminate gaps across IT and OT environments through the Microsoft Defender XDR portal.

• Learn more about Microsoft Defender for IoT
• Check out our documentation to get started
• Leare more about our leading XDR solution that provides the industry’s broadest, native coverage