Enhance the Visibility of Your Network to Increase Cybersecurity

Enhancing Industrial Cybersecurity: Building Visibility, Segmentation, and Securing Critical Assets

As businesses embrace digitalization, the need to connect devices and systems has become imperative. This shift has given physical assets digital profiles, enabling the extraction of valuable data from the edge for analysis at control centers. However, as once-isolated systems become interconnected, they also become more vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. With the increasing frequency of cyber incidents, business owners must embark on their industrial cybersecurity journey. In this article, we’ll explore three key pillars that are critical to cybersecurity: network visibility, segmentation, and securing critical assets.

Building Visibility for Your Network and Security Status

To ensure your industrial network remains secure, visibility is key—whether it’s during configuration, daily operation, or in response to incidents.

Configuration: Follow Security Guidelines and Visualize Your Network Status

One of the most common mistakes in industrial cybersecurity is failing to change default passwords or using devices without sufficient protection. As industrial sites become increasingly interconnected, the risk of a single compromised device threatening the entire network grows exponentially.

A long list of configurations is often required to secure industrial control systems effectively. Utilizing network management software that provides clear visualization of security status and parameters is one of the most efficient ways to manage this complexity. Felipe Sabino Costa, ISA cybersecurity instructor and Moxa LATAM Industrial Cybersecurity expert, highlights the importance of a systematic and automated approach to network security configurations to minimize the risk of human error.

With tools like MXview Security View, you can visualize the security status of your network devices through easy-to-read color-coded dashboards. This allows administrators to instantly identify and address any potential vulnerabilities, ensuring continuous and secure operations.

Operation: Enhance Visibility of Your Industrial Networks

As more machines, people, and systems become connected, the risk of cybersecurity threats increases. To mitigate these risks, it is essential to have real-time visibility of your network’s activity.

Dashboards that provide live network monitoring and topologies that display real-time security status are invaluable for administrators. Additionally, maintaining event logs and utilizing regular backups ensure that your network can be restored to a specific point in time if necessary.

One of Moxa’s customers used network segmentation to enforce cybersecurity policies, simplifying this process by first gaining a clear overview of their network topology. With a large number of devices to manage, understanding your network’s layout is crucial for designing an effective security strategy. You can learn more from our cybersecurity case studies, which demonstrate the impact of proper network segmentation.

Activating Network Segmentation

Segmenting Your Networks for Better Protection

After configuring your network, the next step is to implement network segmentation. By dividing your network into secure segments, you reduce the risk of a cyberattack impacting your entire system. Network segmentation helps contain potential breaches, ensuring that a single compromised device cannot bring down the entire network.

Effective segmentation not only protects sensitive data but also supports smoother cybersecurity policy enforcement. By isolating critical systems and assets, network segmentation enhances the overall resilience of your industrial environment against cyber threats.

Securing Your Critical Assets

Response and Maintenance: Centralized Security Management for Quick Response

Cybersecurity is not a one-time task—it requires ongoing attention and updates. To effectively manage your network, it is essential to establish baseline data that reflects normal network activity. With this baseline in place, administrators can quickly identify abnormal or potentially malicious behavior.

Dashboards with real-time event logging and visualization tools enable faster response times to incidents. For larger networks, it’s crucial to implement centralized management, allowing security updates and cybersecurity policy enforcement across multiple devices in groups. This approach significantly reduces the burden on administrators and minimizes the risk of human error.

With tools like Moxa’s Update Cybersecurity Patterns, you can update security settings and enable policies across a batch of devices, ensuring consistent protection across your network.

Conclusion: Begin Your Industrial Cybersecurity Journey

As industrial networks become more connected, securing these networks becomes increasingly complex. By focusing on network visibility, segmentation, and critical asset protection, you can build a strong cybersecurity foundation for your business.

• Start by establishing full visibility over your network to identify vulnerabilities quickly.
• Implement network segmentationto protect against widespread attacks.
• Regularly update and maintain your cybersecurity policies through centralized management to stay ahead of evolving threats.

There is no single solution to cybersecurity, but by taking these foundational steps, you can significantly strengthen your defense against cyberattacks and secure your industrial operations.

Contact us today to learn more about how Moxa’s solutions can help protect your critical assets and enable secure, reliable business operations.