Microsoft Defender for OT: 4 Week Proof of Concept

Accelerate digital transformation with comprehensive security across your IoT/OT infrastructure. Microsoft Defender for IoT offers agentless network detection and response (NDR) that is rapidly deployed, works with diverse IoT, OT and industrial control system (ICS) devices and interoperates with Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Sentinel, and external security operations centre (SOC) tools. Deploy on-premises or via cloud.

By incorporating agentless technology from Microsoft’s acquisition of CyberX, Azure Defender for IoT enables IT and OT teams to identify critical vulnerabilities and detect threats using IoT/OT-aware behavioral analytics and machine learning—all without impacting availability or performance.

The five key capabilities that customers can expect to receive value from the product’s agentless security for unmanaged IoT/OT devices are:

Asset discovery: Because you cannot protect what you do not know you have, Azure Defender tells you what IoT/OT devices are in your network and how they’re communicating with each other. Also, if you’re implementing a Zero Trust policy, you need to know how these devices are connected so you can segment them onto their own network and manage granular access to them.

Risk and vulnerability management: Azure Defender helps you identify vulnerabilities such as unauthorized devices, unpatched systems, unauthorized internet connections, and devices with unused open ports—so you can take a prioritized approach to mitigating IoT/OT risk for your crown jewel assets. These are the critical devices whose compromise would have a major impact on your organization, such as a safety incident, loss of revenue, or theft of sensitive IP.

Continuous IoT threat monitoring and response: Azure Defender continuously monitors the OT network using Layer 7 Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), informing you immediately when there has been unusual or unauthorized behavior, and empowering you to mitigate an attack before it causes a production failure or safety incident. It incorporates a deep understanding of all major industrial protocols (including Modbus, DNP3, Siemens S7, Ethernet/IP CIP, GE-SRTP, and Yokogawa) and patented, IoT/OT-aware behavioral analytics to detect threats faster and more accurately, with a far shorter learning period than generic baselining algorithms.

Operational efficiency: When you have malfunctioning or misconfigured equipment, you need to quickly figure out what went wrong. By providing deep visibility into what’s going on in the network—such as a misconfigured engineering workstation that’s constantly scanning the network—you can help your IoT/OT engineers quickly identify and address the root cause of those issues.

Unified IT/OT security monitoring and governance: Azure Defender for IoT is deeply integrated with Azure Sentinel and also supports third-party tools such as Splunk, IBM QRadar, and ServiceNow. This helps break down silos that slow communication between IT and OT teams, and creates a common language between them to quickly resolve issues. It also enables you to quickly address attacks that cross IT/OT boundaries (like TRITON), as well as leverage the workflows and training you spent years building in your security operations center (SOC)—so you can apply them to IoT and OT security as well.

The POV consists of:

1. POV kickoff meeting to determine the relevant deployment methodology for the customer and determine the scope of engagment etc.

2. The deployment of the sensor appliances (physical or virtual) in order to start to gather and analyze visible traffic.

3. First feedback meeting with customer to discuss asset inventory accuracy, OT network topology, identified vulnerabilities and threat with potential attack vector information.

4. Final feedback meeting with customer to discuss next steps, remediation roadmap and conclude PoV.