Firstly, for those who haven’t heard the term “Digital Transformation” - it is essentially the name given to a process of business change for a particular goal - that could be greater efficiency, production, safety, visibility or some other reason. This transformation is enabled via digital technologies, and often involves some aspect of automation.
What is a cyber security company doing talking about digital transformation? Our proposition is that the first step for effective cyber security is to know what assets you have, ideally in as much detail as possible. The same is with digital transformation; the first step for effective digital transformation is to know what you have got.
Transformation is the process of moving from one form to another. Very rarely is a transformation a revolution, it is more often an evolution. If you own/manage a network of devices, you will often add to the network and replace devices as they need replacing. It is rare that you scrap everything and start afresh.
In order to start such a change, and continue to monitor the transformation, we must begin by knowing exactly what needs to be done. Visibility into assets is therefore an essential first step, and ongoing element, to digital transformation.
The question often comes up within industrial sectors that it’s often just not possible to do a full asset inventory, especially of larger sites. We take the approach of - let’s attempt to make it as easy as possible to get as much information about assets as possible. We do this with our Dot software. Dot is an asset discovery and management system for Operational Technologies (OT), which is flexible and easy-to-use. It gives as much visibility as possible, which will be essential for working out what parts of the environment need changing first. The added bonus is that it also gives details about cyber vulnerabilities, along with a management console. Find out more about Dot, and contact us today for a friendly chat.
This blog post is the first of a series of posts outlining some of the essentials within industrial cyber security. The authors will differ from post-to-post, but the essence is the same in that there is importance in tackling the first steps right, and for those who are more advanced, revisiting those first steps can shed new light.
