With the evolving convergence of IT and OT networks in industrial manufacturing, cybersecurity concerns have risen likewise. Moreover, legal regulations force industrial companies to enhance cybersecurity in their processes. To address the growing need for industrial cybersecurity solutions, the technology company Siemens has grown its cybersecurity solution portfolio and launched an all-in-one security testing suite for industrial communication networks.
The software framework for active one-time scanning allows individual network devices, network segments or the entire network infrastructure to be scanned during maintenance time windows. It brings together a selection of best-in-class security tools which are integrated into a single user interface.
“Siemens Sinec Security Inspector brings a unique enhanced testing solution to the shopfloor and enables customers to check their entire IT/OT environment including all individual components”, says Michael Metzler, Vice President Horizontal Management Cybersecurity for Digital Industries at Siemens. “Customers can promptly discover risks and potential hazards which puts them in a position to swiftly mitigate cyber vulnerabilities. This results in an enormously reduced effort when inspecting industrial networks.” As factories increasingly have different machine providers using vast vendor variety, manufacturers are faced with several challenges in terms of network security in their plants: asset identification and detection, compliance checks, malware scans and vulnerability checks. With the Siemens tool, all of these can be addressed.
The testing suite for industrial networks has been designed as an open framework. Besides offering security tools developed by Siemens it also contains tools for vulnerability management provided by the cybersecurity company Tenable. Furthermore, more internal and third-party testing tools will successively be added to cover more test cases in future. “With industrial companies transforming into digital enterprises, the importance of cybersecurity has grown tremendously in the last years”, Metzler says. “As a reaction, the Sinec Security Inspector was initially developed to scan our own factories for vulnerabilities in networks. After years of testing and improving this tool, it is now just right for protecting any industrial and manufacturing environment.”
