INDUSTRY WATCH
WITH THE ACQUISITION
OF WURLDTECH, GE
IS ABLE TO PROVIDE
ADVANCED SECURITY
PLATFORMS FOR OT
ENVIRONMENTS THAT
HELP PROTECT CONTROL
SYSTEMS, CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
ASSETS AND PEOPLE
on appropriate use of mobile devices
and applications (apps). For example,
it’s important to let employees know
that certain apps have access to your
camera and geolocation details, which
can be risky.
What is a good cyber security
strategy?
At GE, we take a holistic approach to
enabling resilience across IT and OT
ecosystems. This includes enhancing
our hardware and software with
embedded security; protecting our
products with cyber security solutions,
services and robust testing; responding
to anomalies with global, alwayson security response centers; and
collaborating with others to share
vulnerabilities and key learnings.
Very tactically, it’s important to start
with a risk assessment and maintain a
risk register. These tools help identify
your critical points of success and so
you can build your strongest controls
around them. Look for automated
global controls wherever possible and
local controls for specific local risks. This
is an ongoing process and you should
periodically evaluate the risks and your
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control mechanism. Stay connected
with industry peers to know the latest
and develop periodic mechanisms for
cyber intelligence. This will help you stay
focused on prevention but also enhance
capabilities for detection and response.
In my view, cyber should be treated
similar to safety where we need to do
mandatory drills. Similarly, you need
to periodically evaluate your response
mechanisms. And cross-functional
collaboration is vital in this space.
In your opinion, what is the
role of a CISO in today’s
business world?
Today’s IT is no more a back office
function, but rather increasingly playing
a business enabler role - be it predictive
analytics through data synthesis or
driving more productivity through
optimisation. Cyber plays a similar role
where we are not only protecting our
assets, information and people but
also getting into business discussions
to know customer needs and help
build products that are designed with
cyber security at the beginning. Cyber
security is one of the top priorities for
CEOs and boards of directors and CISOs
are stepping up to play a critical role.
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