Reduce OT systems downtime by 50%

Skybox enables ICS security organizations to conduct vulnerability remediation with reduced downtime

Any breach is one breach too many. But for critical infrastructure organizations and those with operational technology (OT) environments, in particular, any resulting latency or downtime can have serious impacts – most certainly on productivity and revenue and potentially on the health and safety of the workers, the populations they serve, and the environment.

While proactive remediation is vital for mitigating the ever-increasing risk of attack, it can result in downtime, too. Patching, for instance, often requires a machine to be taken offline.

According to the findings of a Total Economic Impact study Skybox recently commissioned with Forrester Research, the Skybox Security Posture Management Platform delivers insights that provide customers with a better understanding of the criticality of potential threats, allowing them to prioritize and remediate exposed vulnerabilities and compliance risks – while reducing the downtime of their mission-critical assets by 50%. The bottom-line savings of avoided downtime are significant, and total more than $1.2 million in reduced revenue leakage over three years.

OT security cost savings and business benefits quantified

For the purposes of its analysis, Forrester interviewed four Skybox customers and aggregated their insights into a single composite organization – a global conglomerate with more than $2 billion in revenue with 15,000 employees and 30,000 assets. The TEI methodology examines the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying the Skybox platform.

Interviewed customers said they chose the Skybox solution for its ability to address representative OT challenges. Downtime is a top concern for several reasons. In addition to its potential health and safety impacts in OT environments, downtime also can directly affect revenue. The cost is sizable – $50,000 per hour according to the study.

At the same time, a substantial increase in new OT vulnerabilities – 20,175 in 2021 alone – places critical infrastructure organizations and manufacturing and industrial companies with OT environments directly in the attackers’ crosshairs. Increasingly aggressive and sophisticated attacks are on the rise, and include cryptojacking – which “hijacks” a computer to use unauthorized CPU time for cryptomining – and ransomware.

Not surprisingly, modern OT organizations are focused on strategies that help them minimize downtime. Operational downtime can be particularly critical for OT where productivity can have a direct impact on revenues. The director of cybersecurity at a manufacturing company shared: “We had server downtime on the OT side on a quarterly basis with crypto malware, things that would spend the CPU to try and do cryptocurrency mining or things like that. We used to have quite a number of those. That was one of the triggers for doing an OT cybersecurity program, and Skybox helped us to identify the most critical quite quickly.”

Skybox capabilities including improved asset visibility, automation, and risk prioritization help customers address both downtime and risk – across their entire IT/OT attack surface.

The Skybox platform creates a digital map of an organization’s assets across the entire IT-OT attack surface, models the connectivity relationships of those assets to identify logical attack paths, and analyzes and prioritizes exposure based on an asset’s criticality to business operations.

Knowing which vulnerabilities pose the most threat to their organization enables customers to plan maintenance cycles – rather than bring down critical functions mid-operation – and clean up existing critical vulnerabilities and compliance risks within their networks. One customer saves $1.2 million annually in avoided downtime based on their investment in Skybox.

Increase attack surface visibility and reduce cyber exposure

In addition to reducing downtime, the study surfaced other opportunities for customers. For instance, the Skybox platform allows companies to consolidate and centralize their processes across converged IT/OT environments, driving improvements to their risk exposure efficiently across their entire attack surface.

Skybox also can help customers realize advantages of reduced downtime for assets and resources that are not directly linked to generating revenue. These include cutting inefficiencies and driving value for operational processes, which improve end-user productivity.

Improved platform stability could mean fewer interruptions in processes and services, resulting in higher customer (and employee) satisfaction and improved business outcomes.

The bottom line: Skybox reduces OT downtime, saves customers money, and strengthens security posture

Ultimately, the insights, automation, and tools delivered by the Skybox platform allow customers to minimize critical-asset downtime and its costly impacts – while effectively prioritizing and remediating exposed compliance and security risks to proactively reduce the risk of a significant data breach.

Learn more on how to reduce critical asset downtime in OT with Skybox: