Fortinet has launched a free service for industrial organisations to assess the cybersecurity maturity level of their operational technology (OT) environments.

According to the State of Automation Technology and Cybersecurity report, published in 2021, nine out of 10 organisations said they had already experienced an intrusion into their automation technology infrastructure, and 63 per cent reported three or more intrusions.

The Fortinet critical infrastructure security assessment is done quickly and objectively through simple questions. Once the answers are sent, the company receives a personalised report with recommendations to raise the level of cybersecurity in its organisation. Based on this assessment, Fortinet can provide individual consulting to identify risks and best practices to raise the level of protection of OT environments.

“Through our interaction with different organisations in the OT segment we realised the need to support them in defining how they could continue their journey in implementing cybersecurity in automation and production environments,” says Roberto Suzuki, regional manager of Fortinet Operational Technology for Latin America and the Caribbean.

“So we decided to create the cybersecurity maturity assessment model for the OT segment, which is based on industry frameworks such as NIST, CMMI, and ARC. With a survey of only 10 questions, it is possible to offer a high-level evaluation…”

“What is worrying in the case of attacks on industrial environments and critical infrastructures are the potential impacts they can cause to organisations, the community, and even the environment,” says Suzuki. “We have many reports of attacks that started through IT networks and then, through lateral movements, reached the OT environment causing disruptions to the supply of products and services, affecting hundreds of thousands of people over several hours.”