Palo Alto Zero Trust Solution – OT Environment

Palo Alto Networks introduced a new Zero Trust security solution for operational technology (OT) designed to help industrial organizations easily secure systems without having to deploy additional sensors.

Since the usage and connectivity of operational technology (OT) are rapidly growing as are the number of cyberattacks on OT environments. These attacks can disrupt operations, causing damage that can reach far beyond revenue and reputation to the supply chain, human safety, and critical infrastructure.

OT devices can be hard to secure because many lack built-in security and were not designed to be patched. In addition, high uptime requirements limit the ability to do regular security maintenance. OT environments are also at risk as organizations adopt new technologies like 5G, which enable mass connectivity, and open remote access.

The solution is built on an AI-powered foundation designed to make it easy to deploy and enable customers to secure OT environments from sophisticated threats while simplifying operations. A key component of the solution is the new cloud-delivered Industrial OT Security service, which can be easily enabled without the need to install additional sensors

Using the industry’s first ML-powered OT visibility engine, the Industrial OT Security service recognizes hundreds of unique OT device profiles, and over 1,000 OT/Industrial Control System (ICS) applications and has hundreds of distinct OT threat signatures to help protect these hard-to-secure assets.

A notable feature of the service is its ability to help security teams proactively understand risk and apply controls. It continuously observes, categorizes, and visualizes asset behavior so anomalies can be discovered immediately and addressed with a firewall policy.

The Zero Trust OT Security solution secures multiple OT use cases with consistent Zero Trust policies, all managed centrally:

• OT assets and networks using Palo Alto Networks NGFWs, along with the new Industrial OT Security service.
• Remote access using Prisma SASE.
• 5G-connected devices using NGFWs with Palo Alto Networks 5G-Native Security.

Palo Alto Networks Zero Trust OT Security solution and Industrial OT Security service will be available in March.