Abhay Bhargava, Sr. Director, Frost & Sullivan, Sumit Dhar, Vice President, Government Risk and Compliance, Digital14
The Middle East is witnessing rapid population growth, urban expansion, and a manufacturing boom. This unprecedented growth is driving investments in operational technology (OT). Traditionally, OT networks were air-gapped. However, organizations are increasingly connecting their OT networks to optimize their processes and gain a competitive strategic advantage.
With the growing information technology (IT)–OT convergence, significant compliance requirements, and relentless targeting by threat actors, the risk exposure of OT environments increases. Also, industries worldwide face regulatory and financial pressures to establish a holistic approach to managing safety, cybersecurity, and governance, resulting in a strong demand for OT security.
However, with labor costs on the rise and a growing shortage of appropriately skilled security resources, companies face unprecedented challenges in protecting their OT networks. Globally, the OT sector expects significant threats as we move forward, and the C-Suite is slowly getting involved in managing the OT risks. Organizations today, therefore, are focused on gaining visibility into their OT security posture and driving the overall maturity of OT security.
As they do that, organizations face several challenges and complexities:
• Significant end-to-end system integration issues
• Unpredictable and unforeseen cybersecurity risks
• Increasing cyber threats from competent and motivated adversaries
• A massive increase in workloads of security operations teams
• More complex compliance requirements and increased vulnerability from non-compliance
In this webinar, Digital14, in collaboration with Frost & Sullivan, will discuss the emerging OT trends, IT and OT convergence challenges, and risks associated with the ever-evolving cybersecurity and threat landscape.