ABB joins the new Global Operational Technology Cybersecurity Alliance

The Operational Skills Cybersecurity Consortium will develop a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy for the Operational Skills Infrastructure

ABB, a leader in professional digital skills, has joined a new alliance to provide skills and structures for safe and reliable operational skills (OT). The Operational Skills Cybersecurity Alliance (OTCSA) aims to bridge the dangerous distance between OT and critical infrastructure and industrial control systems (ICS) security to support and improve the daily lives of citizens and workers in an ever-changing world. Career leaders Check Point Software, BlackBerry Cylance, Forescout, Fortinet, Microsoft, Mocana, NCC Group, Qualys, SCADAFence, Splunk and Wärtsilä have partnered with ABB to establish the OTCSA.

Satish Gannu, Chief Security Officer at ABB and Senior Vice President of Architecture and Anatomy at ABB Ability™, said: "With the full 360-degree cybersecurity data protection capabilities, ABB understands the critical importance of cybersecurity in infrastructure and career systems and processes. "We trust OTCSA to provide a structure for much-needed treatment at a time when industrial customers live in an increasingly threatened world, exposing arrangements to potentially catastrophic loss risks."

OTCSA's mandate is based on five areas:

Strengthen the cyber-physical risk posture of OT environments and interfaces to enable OT/IT interconnection

Educate OT operators on how to protect their OT infrastructure in accordance with risk management processes and reference architectures/designs that are clearly aligned with regulations and international standards, such as IEC 62443

Educate OT vendors on secure OT architectures, interfaces, and security functions

Procurement, development, installation, operation, protection, and enforcement of critical infrastructure that underpins greater security

Reduce the time to more secure, mission-critical infrastructure

Sixty percent of ICS-using arrangements indicated that they had experienced system vulnerabilities in the past year, and 97 percent acknowledged that the need for OTCSA was critical due to the convergence of IT and OT 1 due to the security challenges. Cyberattacks on OT and critical infrastructure are on the rise, impacting operations and representing business risks for all professions – from disrupting manufacturing processes and utility systems to disrupting security systems. Threats to OT are likely to have greater potential impacts at scale and scale than information-only environments, including loss of life, ecological damage, and negative fiscal impacts.

"Critical infrastructure and industrial control systems are critical to orchestrating revenues and profits, as well as the global economy," Ganu said. "The need for professional collaboration to establish the architecture, execution, and process playbook to rapidly ramp up the OT posture has lagged behind IT by a decade in terms of security."

Until now, no career placement has focused on improving the cyber risk landscape by providing OT operators and IT/OT solution providers with a realistic architecture, implementation, and process walkthrough so that they can comply with evolving professional standards and regulations. These robust security strategies will encompass the entire lifecycle – procurement, development, placement, installation, operation, protection and decommissioning – and address all aspects related to people, processes and skills.

OTCSA fosters collaboration between leading IT and OT companies, thought leaders in the cybersecurity community, and vendors and OT operators across a wide range of industries. Membership is available to any company that operates critical infrastructure or a common OT ecosystem to conduct business (OT operator) and a company that provides IT and OT processing solutions (processing solution provider).

ABB joins the new Global Operational Technology Cybersecurity Alliance

ABB joins the new Global Operational Technology Cybersecurity Alliance

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