Forescout to deliver the first zero-trust solution for OT, IoT, healthcare and hybrid cloud segmentation

Forescout has announced its first zero-trust solution for enterprise-wide segmentation across IT, IoT, Healthcare and OT environments. Top Business Tech takes a closer look at each offering.  

OT and IT-OT Segmentation

Forescout has announced that eyeSegment now integrates with eyeInspect (formerly SilentDefense). This will simplify segmentation and reduce risk in converging IT-OT environments and within OT networks. 

OT environments currently face several challenges, including the risk of lateral movement of malware, cyber attackers, and the impact of removed users impacting cyber-physical and OT infrastructure. In addition, the mitigation of malware that affects an OT infrastructure and the threat posed by multivendor inconsistencies in segmentation controls across extended OT environments. According to Gartner, “By 2021, 80% of industrial IoT [IIoT] projects will have OT-specific security requirements, up from 40% today.” 

Forescout’s solution seeks to simplify Zero-Trust segmentation, provide a clearer understanding of the IT-OT segmentation state, visualise traffic flows and reduce attacks while maintaining compliance standards. In addition to this, it reduces compliance risk and cost through efficient management of internetwork access. 

eyeSegment maps traffic flows to a logical taxonomy of users, applications, services, functions, locations, devices and risk levels automatically. This is done across the entirety of the network, making it easier to track OT traffic in real-time.

eyeInspect protects critical infrastructure with a combination of patented deep-packet inspection (DPI) f ICS-specific threat indicators. eyeInspect provides insight on network communications in real-time and can automate threat-detection and compliance tasks with its Advanced Alert Aggregation and Asset Baselining.

Healthcare Segmentation

In addition to eyeSegment integration capabilities with OT and IT-OT, it can now integrate with Medigate to simplify segmentation across medical devices, clinical equipment, IoT devices and standard IT systems in healthcare networks. The healthcare industry faces the same challenges as that of OT environments. Even with new technologies such as IoMT (Internet of Medical Things), cloud applications, and traditional zoning strategies, this is still not enough to keep the healthcare environment safe. 

“Connected medical devices represent a fast-growing threat attack vector, and the lack of device manufacturer standardisation and interoperability has created a significant problem for clinical care network operations,” said Pedro Abreu, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Forescout.

Forescout’s platform seeks to accelerate Zero-Trust segmentation across IT and Medical groups to understand the IT-OT and healthcare network in real-time. Its solution simplifies threat analysis in the process, with fewer dashboards and tools. It also optimises the IT-Healthcare workflows, leveraging existing investments with a consistent segmentation policy across the enterprise. Lastly, in addition to mitigating against risk, it will maintain compliance and reduce compliance risk and cost. 

“The Medigate and Forescout partnership and integration provide healthcare organisations with rich contextual visibility into their IT and clinical networks, as well as sophisticated network analysis to detect threats and implement clinically-driven policies. These actionable insights will, in turn, reduce risk and improve patient safety,” said Jonathan Langer, co-founder and CEO, Medigate.

Hybrid Cloud Segmentation 

Forescout’s third new offering is that eyeSegment now integrates with AWS Cloud to enable cross-domain and data centre and cloud segmentation from a unified policy. In addition, the new hybrid could segmentation provides a unified mapping and visualisation of relationships and assures segmentation hygiene within and across AWS environments. By mapping dependencies between various assets, hybrid cloud migration has the potential to be a far more seamless transition. 

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In addition to the new assets announced by Forescout, cross-team collaboration has been enhanced through the platform to design and deliver segmentation policies across the enterprise. 

Baseline traffic has been improved to allow user-centric views and a User-specific find-and-filter criterion for the shared matrix. Lastly, the enhancements have improved export capabilities and encourage cross-team collaboration by providing additional contextual details.  

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Amber Donovan-Stevens

Amber is a Content Editor at Top Business Tech

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