To help secure the operational technology (OT) systems within industrial organizations against growing targeted attacks, cybersecurity solutions provider Critical Start has launched a managed detection and response (MDR) offering dedicated to these environments.
The offering, based on Critical Start’s managed cyber risk reduction (MCCR) principle, is designed to deliver combined threat, vulnerability, and risk monitoring and management for threats facing critical OT systems.
“Critical Start MDR for OT is a comprehensive and flexible service that combines OT-specific threat detection capabilities with the ability to leverage a customer’s existing infrastructure and tools by ingesting security-relevant logs to address the unique challenges faced by industrial organizations,” the company said in a statement.
Scalable risk management
Critical Start MDR for OT promises visibility and risk reduction at a “reasonable” cost for organizations with or without OT security tools. With its scalability support for additional monitoring tools as and when they are onboarded, the offering aims for a “future-proof” deployment.
The offering, on top of operating independently, can support dedicated OT security tools including Dragos, Claroty, and Nozomi, according to the company.
“With threat actors constantly upping their tactics against industrial organizations, cyber incidents against these organizations and their OT environments have become increasingly common,” the company said. “Critical Start MDR for OT aims to address these challenges by providing predictable, flat-rate pricing for 24x7x365 threat monitoring, detection, and response, enabling industrial organizations to reduce financial and operational risks targeting their environments, whether through unintended operational changes, cyberattacks against OT systems directly, or attacks originating from the IT network that impact the OT environment.”
The offering is available at the launch and will be priced as per an organization’s size and usage.
Differentiated detection with customizable alerting
Critical Start’s new offering is designed on the principle of separate IT and OT alerts, differentiating threat detection and response actions for both workflows.
“By offering both MDR for OT and IT, Critical Start offers an end-to-end visibility, providing monitoring and threat detection for IT/OT convergence in a single platform,” the company said on its website.
Additionally, it features customizable alerting, providing read-only visibility to prevent unauthorized changes to operational processes and ensuring the right personnel are informed of potential threats promptly. “The platform defines separate Rules of Engagement and product integrations for IT and OT environments, ensuring that customers can trust Critical Start not to take response actions that could negatively impact their operational environments, such as isolating a host, without proper authorization and validation,” the company said.