The Swiss Multinational Corporation & industrial automation & heavy electrical giant, ABB and IBM, American technology & consulting major, enter into an agreement of collaboration, focused on connecting cybersecurity and operational technology (OT). Adhering to the agreement, ABB has developed a new OT Security Event Monitoring Service1 that couples process control system domain expertise with IBM’s security event monitoring portfolio to help improve security

for industrial operators.

In a statement, Robert Putman, Global Manager of Cyber Security Service for Industrial Automation at ABB, said, “ABB’s collaboration with IBM makes it possible to analyze process control events in the context of security and impact to the operational environment, delivering strong improvement in our OT cyber threat visibility across the board.”

Commenting on the occasion, Dr. Andreas Kühmichel, CTO, Chemicals, Petroleum & Industrial Products, IBM, said, “We see the integration of these solutions as bringing market-leading capabilities together for a singular view of OT security. With more comprehensive OT and IT security visibility, clients can help reduce the risk of production being suddenly interrupted due to a security event, resulting in costly downtime and broader risk to the company.”

The attacks on industrial control system environments are constantly on the rise and the pandemic has only been a tailwind to this predicament. Putting it into a perspective, IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index had recently found that attacks on industrial and manufacturing facilities have increased by over 2,000 percent since 2018. With the new OT monitoring system, ABB will send security events to IBM’s security information and event management platform known as QRadar, which possesses ample domain knowledge needed to swiftly react to security incidents related to process control.