GEC NEWS WIREThe United Arab Emirates proceeds ever onwards in its stated goal of increasing the industrial sector’s contribution to GDP. Industrial exports have grown 17% since the launch of Operation 300bn, the government program to boost the sector’s output to AED300 billion (US$81.6 billion) by 2030. In 2023, the UAE industrial segment’s economic contribution stood at AED197 billion, demonstrating great progress for a sector that is now the third largest in terms of its almost 10% share of nominal GDP.
But amid this, risks remain to the progress the region has made. Leaves on the line can come in many forms – supply chain issues, talent gaps, geopolitical turmoil. But perhaps the most urgent is the cyberthreat ecosystem, which has become something of an industry itself. Now more sophisticated and capable of refined, stealthy campaigns (bolstered by AI), the community of malicious actors has flourished. And without addressing fundamentals, the technical teams entrusted with protecting the UAE’s critical infrastructure will be flailing at specters.
Specters are difficult to spot. But what if their target were also invisible? Such is the case in many of today’s complex OT environments. As the rise of IoT has forced IT and OT to merge, asset visibility has become synonymous with security. Cybersecurity talent gaps in OT and IT do not prevent organizations’ leaders from reaching one simple conclusion: you cannot protect what you cannot see. Real-time asset visibility solutions help with so much more than compliance. To the OT security professional, they are both telescope and microscope, offering the ability to recognize trouble from afar and drill down into vulnerable nooks.
Push and pull
In an environment where operational uptime is everything, plant managers will often be in conflict with CISOs who must prioritize compliance and security. The latter must find ways of compiling and maintaining detailed information on all things OT – hardware, platforms, and software tools. It is only then that the security team can discover vulnerabilities (allowing triage for patching purposes) and establish baselines for normal asset behavior (allowing advanced real-time threat detection). Once the CISO knows what is to be protected, they can segment the network and isolate the most important assets. If everything is designed appropriately, mitigation and response in the face of genuine threats is quicker, as are recovery times. You will note that all this is good news for uptime-focused plant managers.
The agility described is made possible by the company’s asset-visibility platform, which delivers real-time insights into every element of the OT environment. Enterprises can optimize inventory management, which goes a long way towards boosting their ability to detect threats early. So armed, the organization will be more resilient to the burgeoning threat landscape and will find it easier to remain compliant with UAE government and industry standards.
Imagine what a manufacturer or a utility could do when equipped with real-time asset visibility. I mentioned slicker reporting, but what about resource allocation and maintenance scheduling? Both are made frictionless. Meanwhile, vulnerabilities are laid bare, allowing tech and security teams to collaborate on fixes. Where patches require downtime and flaws are less critical, operations staff can be made aware of ways to avoid damaging errors.
Let’s get visible
Asset visibility is the first step in being able to detect anomalies. The established behavioral baselines allow the detection of deviations from normal operations. Catching these minor fluctuations is vital in flagging threats at their nascent stages. With the right analysis, a wobble in the norm can lead to the detection of unauthorized access, or of the live operation of malware. Being able to detect and respond to ransomware attacks and internal errors with more precision and speed is the perennial wish of every CISO. When an event occurs, it is empowering to have access to information such as a list of affected devices, the nature of the incident, the source of the incursion, and a list of actions required for mitigation. If this information flow is timely, downtime need not necessarily be the result, even if the attack is already underway.
Enterprises in the industrial sector are subject to standards. If they fail to meet them, their operations and security could be forfeit. Asset visibility enables the monitoring and management of assets to ensure that operations comply with UAE regulations like Federal Decree-Law No. 20 for 2020 on Standardization and Metrology, and Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2022 on the Regulation and Development of Industry.
But beyond mere compliance, visibility platforms allow firms to reach new heights of efficiency by opening the door to predictive maintenance. Once technical and operations teams can monitor asset health and performance, they can foresee component failure and perform minor repairs that call for less downtime than if troubleshooting is done after a machine goes offline. Predictive maintenance also extends the lifespan of equipment and reduces the labor hours spent on fixing things.
Waste not
Sustainability is now an industrial watchword. Better asset visibility means better asset usage, and better asset usage means better allocation of resources. Organizations can reduce waste, optimize costs, and improve overall efficiency. And we should not forget that diligent monitoring of industrial workspaces can detect hazards early (whether caused by cyberattack or human oversight), enhancing health and safety and the integrity of equipment. Additionally, when asset visibility is implemented comprehensively, threat-detection tools can be used to concoct training scenarios that upskill operational staff.
We should be clear – asset visibility is about more than awareness of an asset’s existence. It is about granular knowledge of its form and function – type, geographic location, operational status, and so on. This knowledge, as we have seen, allows the industrial organization to go beyond compliance and security to a range of business areas, from employee experience to the brand’s ESG bona fides. In other words, by taking visibility seriously, the organization takes its place as a sector leader.
