Solution: Follow a Convergence Roadmap

Plotting a Roadmap for Current and Future Convergence

Key steps to accelerate IT/OT convergence

The market is brimming with useful IT/OT convergence frameworks, workshops, and approaches—whether custom-developed, originating from a public entity, or offered in conjunction with one of our partners. Some frameworks may even be specific to your current Industry 4.0 use case or technology area.

This article from our Stratascale Cybersecurity practice offers a useful example of a cybersecurity convergence model. The model is used to increase security around an organization’s critical infrastructure and cyber-physical systems. Other frameworks, (like those offered by Stratascale’s Data Intelligence practice) cover more targeted convergence guidance to help organizations gain the most benefit from Industry 4.0’s combined use of advanced analytics, IIoT, and cloud technologies.

For the purposes of this Horizon Report, we’ve examined these frameworks to extrapolate a few general convergence steps any organization can apply or adapt to multiple IT/OT use cases. (Note: These steps are based loosely on blueprints associated with Stratascale partner Info-Tech and its Preparing for Technology Convergence in Manufacturing workshop.)

IT/OT Convergence Framework

[Source: Stratascale]

Your designated OT team members and IT team members can ask a number of questions of themselves (and one another) at each of the above stages. Among other things, the Info-Tech stages suggest each group spend time assessing their own strengths and weaknesses, current areas of synergy, and opportunities for better future convergence.

Work Toward Greater IT/OT Convergence Maturity

Assess your own progress toward convergence

What does a mature IT/OT convergence look like? This Info-Tech diagram shows various maturity levels and indicators to help identify your organization’s own progress, from less mature, “siloed” environments (at the bottom layer) to their more mature, “fully converged” counterparts (at the top layer).

[Source: Info-Tech Research Group]

Applying the Model to Industry 4.0 Use Cases

Use case example: Securing critical infrastructure on the factory floor

Stratascale Cybersecurity experts will tell you: Risk reduction is a good starting point for organizations on the road to IT/OT convergence. Support materials associated with Gartner research, “Alternative Organizational Models for IT/OT Alignment,” also state that “one of the most common first initiatives in an IT OT alignment undertaking is to address risk.”

Stratascale’s David Beidelman sees recent headlines around critical infrastructure attacks fueling IT/OT efforts to reduce risk associated with exposed IIoT attack surfaces. To help reduce risk, industrial environments may follow a process similar to the IT/OT convergence framework outlined earlier:

Assessment: Organizations often call on Beidelman and his team to assess the cybersecurity risks in their manufacturing environment. One way the team may do so is by deploying low-impact, automated technology on the factory floor to identify both IoT and OT assets along with their network traffic.
Defining desired state: They then help customers build a baseline to define acceptable behavior vs. anomalies.
Identifying critical gaps: They identify key "gaps" to close in the organization's own cybersecurity defenses.
Risk mitigation planning and deployment: Organizations then move on to optimal risk mitigation solutions for their own unique priorities, requirements, and budget.

These IT-oriented cybersecurity steps don’t have to intrude on ongoing OT team operations, but they offer great information to OT teams about critical risks that must be addressed. Just as important for overall IT/OT convergence, providing a way for IT and OT to focus on common security goals is often a great way to build trust and understanding of IT’s efforts.