Global Industrial Equipment Manufacturer Secures OT Environment and Protects Operational Continuity

Armis removes the “black box” of uncertainty about what is on the network.

This manufacturer of heavy equipment has evolved its production capabilities increasingly into digital processes. With a massive labor force of skilled engineers and production workers, maintaining productivity on the shop floor is a top priority. Armis helped the manufacturer segment, secure, and redesign the OT network with confidence and efficiency, reducing the attack surface and preventing lateral threat movement from potentially hindering productivity.

The company is based in the northeastern US and is a global manufacture of heavy equipment. The vice president of cyber security/CISO is a 20-year veteran of the company. He works closely with another longtime employee, the information security engineer, who manages security operations. Though they’ve never had any incidents and have confidently managed the organization’s IT stack and devices, they began to express concern over the security of operational technology (OT) devices on the production floor. Driven by a continually evolving manufacturing process, the company has been putting more intelligence into digital production processes, leading to more assets that fall outside of the typical IT category—such as giant laser cutters and plasma cutters that require access to engineering files in order to cut pieces of metal. As the CISO puts it, he and his team did not “have a good picture” of what devices were actually on the OT network.