eBook I How to Make IT-OT Convergence Smooth

Rockwell Automation • December 30, 2021

How can enterprises ensure that their IT and OT teams work together on security? Two experts from Rockwell Automation share their thoughts in this eBook.

"We brought IT, plant engineers, plant managers and security teams together in a room for a week, and we had a workshop. We used the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, which most CISOs know and use for their IT environment, to talk through the IT/OT converged environment. At first, IT and OT were on opposite sides of the table. They were not going to work together.

"But as they started talking, they started to understand each other. We came out of the workshop with a road map that both sides had created together, and we've been executing that road map ever since," says Dawn Cappelli, vice president and CISO at Rockwell Automation.

"In IT, there are usually central functions. In OT, you have plants that are pretty much independent because they're scattered all over the country and oftentimes globally. The life cycle of the OT technologies is 10 to over 20 years and they're highly decentralized," says Dilip Sawhney, managing director - India at Rockwell Automation.

In this eBook as part of a panel interview with Information Security Media Group, Cappelli and Sawhney discuss:

Why IT and OT convergence has been tough historically;
Common IT and OT security challenges;
How IT and OT security teams can work together to have a common security framework;