June 1, 2021 – ServiceNow, a company that streamlines work processes with modern digital workflows, recently debuted its first product designed for the manufacturing sector. The company is partnering with Siemens Energy to provide a software service that allows energy companies to monitor, identify and respond to cyber threats intended to attack critical infrastructure.

This partnership and new offering couldn’t have come at a better time, said Leo Simonovich, head of Industrial Cybersecurity at Siemens Energy. “The energy landscape is the most attacked sector of critical infrastructure, and for good reason: it’s the backbone of our economy,” Simonovich said. “Legacy assets, like control systems and PLCs, are being brought online and connected to other assets to realize the benefits of digitalization. Every new asset that gets connected introduces new vulnerabilities in the infrastructure.”

Marshall Tyler, vice president of Industry Solutions at ServiceNow, said customers have been asking for help securing critical infrastructure, so ServiceNow is happy to answer the call. “This is the #1 thing our customers have asked us to do,” he said. The company’s workflow automation platform enables an enterprise to optimize business processes in any area, including logistics, customer service, employee hiring or scientific discovery.

The Siemens Energy solution combines AI-based software from Siemens’ Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service with ServiceNow’s Operational Technology Management software to detect cyber anomalies and create a workflow to streamline their mitigation.

“Various parts of an organization—such as the field, operations center and control room—have to work together quickly to stop cyber threats,” Simonovich said. “We are helping create bridges between these different parts of an organization. With our joint capabilities, we are providing a detection capability that allows operators to zero in on threats without shutting down the whole system.”

“We are taking the IT expertise we have gained over the years and applying it to the manufacturing sector,” said Abhijit Mitra, vice president and GM, Industry Products, at ServiceNow. “We are applying our workflow platform in the area of operational tech management.” He explained that after various anomalies—potential or definite cyber threats have been identified—they need to be prioritized. “ServiceNow will help orchestrate the workflow for dealing with these threats.”

VMWARE SECURITY CONNECT — A new VMware security report shows a lack of urgency among security professionals despite the ongoing surge in material breaches.

The global security insights report was released during Thursday’s VMware Security Connect 2021. The report is based on an online survey of more than 3,500 CIOs, CTOs and CISOs in December 2020 from across the globe.

VMware also unveiled a new collaboration with Zoom.

The theme of Security Connect 2021 is redefining security. VMware’s vision is to make security simpler, faster and smarter. About 90% of VMware’s business transacts with partners.

More Opportunity for VMware Partners
Patrick Morley is senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s security business unit. He said the company’s partners play a significant role in redefining security.

There’s an opportunity for our partners to get engaged with the whole portfolio that we’re talking about,” he said. “And what we’ve seen is that you had a traditional group of partners that were very security-focused, and then you had broader-based business partners out there who are providing products and services to companies across the whole IT spectrum. Those organizations are all doing security now. VMware’s ability to partner with them, and to give them more products and capabilities to help their customers, is part of the strategy.”

One of the important communities that VMware services on the partner side is incident responders, Morley said.

“We have hundreds of incident responders that use our technologies to help go in and deal with breaches,” he said. “Back to the complexity and what we’re seeing right now, last quarter we saw a 100% increase in the number of breaches that our partners are involved in. That’s 100% on a quarter-over-quarter basis. We’ve never seen that. So security is so important right now for partners.”