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A cross-industry cooperative has been established to promote standards-based cyber security practices across the country in response to the heightened threat environment.
The Operational Technology Cybersecurity Coalition has been officially launched – an industry group which aims to work with government and industry to advocate for vendor-neutral, interoperable, standards-based cyber security practices.
The founding members of the new coalition – Claroty, Forescout, Honeywell, Nozomi Networks, and Tenable – aim to leverage their collective experience in the cyber space to explore ways to best employ data-sharing solutions to bolster the nation’s resilience.
This is expected to involve sharing feedback on public policy proposals and advocating for increased funding for federal OT cyber security.
“Given the significant exposure, a more dangerous set of threat actors, and the risks to national security and society, the government needs to leverage all cyber capabilities at its disposal to protect critical infrastructure,” Grant Geyer, chief product officer & CISO, Claroty, said.
“No one entity or provider has a monopoly on protecting critical infrastructure, and a vendor-neutral and open standards approach can ensure that we’re all working in concert to keep the country safe.”
Shawn Taylor, vice-president of threat defence, Forescout, said given the size of their combined customer base, the coalition represents the “largest and most impactful” organisations in critical infrastructure.
“We have the potential to collect asset information, vulnerability data, threats and security incidents, and risk status to provide real time insight and data to help support the US government, asset owners and operators as part of our collective defence mission,” Taylor added.
According to Jeff Zindel, vice-president and general manager of OT cyber security for Honeywell Connected Enterprise, the firms, which compete in the commercial space, would work together to strengthen “sometimes-fragile OT environments”.
“This work is essential to protect our country’s critical infrastructure,” Zindel said.
Andrea Carcano, Nozomi Networks co-founder and CPO, added: “To combat the growing number of threats against our critical infrastructure, it is essential that the cyber security industry embrace competitive innovation and open information sharing to collectively strengthen defences.
“As a founding member of the coalition, we look forward to helping advance these key priorities to fortify the security of our nation’s most critical infrastructure.”
Marty Edwards, vice-president, operational technology security, Tenable, said that with the coalition representing the entire OT lifecycle, the US government can leverage their resources to better inform critical infrastructure operators.
“We look forward to working together to promote these goals,” he said.
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