Traditionally, operational technology (OT) and IT have occupied separate sides of enterprise security. But with digital transformation, the old, siloed approach is showing its age.¹ With increased operational technology connectivity driving efficiency, new vulnerabilities are created. Roughly 41.6 billion devices are projected to be internet-facing by 2025, creating an enormous attack surface.² 

With Microsoft Defender for IoT, businesses can interconnect their operational technology environment without compromising security. Powered by Microsoft’s scalable, cost-effective cloud technology, Defender for IoT helps organizations manage assets, track emerging threats, and control risks across enterprise and mission-critical networks.

Why choose a cloud-powered solution for IoT and operational technology security?
The proliferation of connected devices means that operational technology security solutions require speed, accuracy, and context on a massive scale. According to Microsoft’s Cyber Signals threat brief, there were unpatched, high-severity vulnerabilities in 75% of the most common industrial controllers used in a customers’ operational technology networks.

Even ordinary Internet of Things (IoT) devices like printers and routers, attackers can breach and move laterally through an IT system, installing malware and stealing sensitive intellectual property. Cloud-powered IoT and operational technology security solutions offer several advantages over traditional solutions:

• Discovery of end-to-end assets. Asset profiling involves analyzing network signals to discover and categorize network assets. Profiling in the cloud is driven by an extensive collection of classifiers, allowing for high-fidelity categorization into categories such as servers, workstations, mobile devices, and IoT devices. Monitoring and analyzing potential security risks can be done once the assets have been classified properly. This is critical for protecting an organization’s networks, as vulnerabilities or misconfigurations in any asset can create a potential entry point for attackers.
  
  
• Detect and respond to threats as they occur in real-time. Reduce response times from days to minutes by detecting and responding to threats as they occur. Through collaboration between defenders from different industries, we can share best practices and information to better protect against emerging threats. By leveraging collective knowledge, defenders can stay ahead of malicious actors and respond to incidents as they occur.
  
  
• Defend against known and unknown threats. Microsoft AI and machine learning alerts provide real-time detection of threats, as well as automated responses to known or unknown attacks. These alerts are designed to help security teams quickly identify and investigate suspicious activity, then take the necessary steps to protect the organization. For instance, a security system that monitors network activity in real-time can detect suspicious activity within minutes of it occurring, alerting security administrators to act before the attack has a chance to succeed. 
  
  
• Compliance reports tailored to your requirements. Organizations can easily create and manage tailored compliance reports that are up-to-date, secure, and compliant with industry standards. With customizable reporting tools available in Microsoft Azure, users can obtain data from multiple sources and build robust, customized reports. Along with providing automated reporting and scheduling capabilities, Azure Workbooks provide a collaborative experience across silos.
  
  
• Workflows and integrations that leverage the cloud. Cloud-to-cloud integrations help organizations streamline workflows and easily access data from multiple sources. By connecting multiple cloud services, organizations can gain better visibility into their operations, automate processes, and reduce manual labor. Additionally, cloud-to-cloud integrations help organizations scale quickly and eliminate the need to purchase additional hardware and software. The result | reduced costs and increased efficiency.

Simplified integration for end-to-end protection
To enable comprehensive protection across your enterprise, Defender for IoT easily integrates with Microsoft Sentinel. Together, Defender for IoT and Microsoft Sentinel provide security information and event management (SIEM) for both OT and IT environments. Defender for IoT also shares threat data with Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and non-Microsoft products like Splunk, IBM Q Radar, and ServiceNow. This extensive and integrated ecosystem allows your converged SOC to tune alerts automatically across IoT and IT, creating baselines and custom alerts that help reduce alert fatigue.

To learn more about how Microsoft Defender for IoT can help create a unified security solution for your organization, reach out to us. 

¹Industry 4.0 technologies assessment: A sustainability perspective, Chunguang Bai, Patrick Dallasega, Guido Orzes, and Joseph Sarkis. November 2020.

²The convergence of IT and OT: Cyber risks to critical infrastructure on the rise, Microsoft. December 2022.

³Someone tried to poison a Florida city by hacking into the water treatment system, sheriff says, Amir Vera, Jamiel Lynch, and Christina Carrega. February 8, 2021.