Yokogawa Electric Corporation, a global solutions and service company, has announced the release of the OpreX IT/OT Security Operations Centre (IT/OT SOC) service. 

 

This new addition to the OpreX Safety and Security family is a centrally managed service based on people (service organisation), processes, and technology. 

 

Targeted primarily at industrial enterprises, this service was developed by Yokogawa to improve the security of IT and OT networks by detecting, analysing, and enabling a quick and effective response to cybersecurity incidents from anywhere in the world. 

 

Cybersecurity threats

Monitoring in real-time for cybersecurity threats to networks and IT/OT infrastructure offers customers comprehensive protection that mitigates both operational and business downtime and eases the task of IT/OT asset management. 

 

Development background

New cybersecurity threats emerge every day. As technologies evolve, so do the associated cyber threats and vulnerabilities that can cause severe damage to an organisation's data, assets, and reputation. 

 

Security operations centres (SOCs) are increasingly regarded as critical to an effective cybersecurity strategy as they proactively focus on undiscovered cyber security threats and vulnerabilities. 

 

While traditionally, the IT and OT domains have been managed separately, the convergence of IT and OT networks -- driven by digital transformation (DX) -- has made the two domains increasingly interdependent. For efficiency reasons, organisations can choose to establish a converged IT and OT SOC that acts as one team, using a shared data lake, tooling, resources, and processes. 

 

Monitoring service

In 2019, Yokogawa began developing an internal security monitoring service for the IT infrastructure of Yokogawa Group companies around the globe, monitoring personal computers, DNS/AD servers, intrusion detection systems, and factory systems and processing up to 600 million events a day by using cyber threat intelligence (CTI) and machine learning (ML) programmes. 

 

Utilising the vast experience that it has gained internally, and complemented by its best-in-class approach to OT security for its customers, Yokogawa has developed a cloud-based IT/OT SOC service to provide its customers with an integrated, consistent, and holistic approach to security for the IT and OT domains. 

 

Features

IT/OT SOC is a security monitoring service that uses next-generation Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) which is fast, scalable, and unified. The service uses various CTI and ML tools to collect event logs from customers' IT/OT devices to detect cyber-attacks, unauthorised accesses, and infiltration by malware. It provides a wide range of analysis, consulting, and managed services with next-generation SOC architecture.

 

Powered by ML and AI, the IT/OT SOC is an advanced intelligent SIEM service that detects abnormal activities and sophisticated attacks. The ML- and AI-driven SOC can devise a threat response by implementing the right playbook, reducing the investigation time by providing analysts the precise action point, and minimising the mean time to detect and respond.

 

IT/OT SOC employs a security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) platform of technologies that coordinate, execute, and automate tasks between various people and tools, minimising human errors and thereby speeding up the overall security response. 

 

Collected logs and event information are collated in real-time by multiple CTI tools, providing around-the-clock, year-round protection through the detection of suspicious communications and malware. 

 

Ultimate deployment flexibility

IT/OT SOC can be integrated with existing IT/OT security services, network security infrastructure, and incident management systems. Customers can also integrate it with their SOCs or Yokogawa's existing SOC. 

 

Major target markets are oil and gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, iron and steel, pulp and paper, electric power, and wastewater treatment.

 

Its applications include information security, network security, application security, IT and OT security monitoring and detection, cybersecurity consulting.-- TradeArabia News Service