Multi-Vendor Firewalls in OT Networks: Benefits, Risks, and Best Practices
Summary: Dragos reports that over the past quarter, several OT environments suffered widespread compromises tied to vulnerable or end-of-life firewall products from a single vendor, with OT patching sometimes delayed for months or years. The firm argues that firewalls from multiple vendors, with different code bases and rulesets, can reduce the risk of one exploit compromising an entire network, but only for mature, well-resourced organizations able to manage disparate administration tools, logging systems, and ruleset configurations.
Key Takeaway: Perimeter devices such as firewalls and VPN concentrators are where many OT incidents begin, as initial access brokers and state actors use automated scans to find unpatched systems, then move laterally through OT segments with little detection. A single-vendor firewall estate with delayed patching is the exposure Dragos documented in real compromises last quarter.
Read the original at Dragos Blog ↗
- Topics
- OT / ICS & Critical Infrastructure
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