All news with #iec 62443 tag

🔒 Recent cyberattacks against U.S. water and wastewater systems show that OT impact extends beyond data loss to public health, environment, and community functions. Distributed architectures, legacy controllers, remote cellular sites, and accumulated third-party access increase the attack surface. Government advisories document exploitation of internet-facing PLCs and HMIs, while new legislation seeks to expand EPA cybersecurity authority. Fortinet recommends unified OT architectures, secure cellular connectivity, ZTNA, and IEC 62443-4-2–certified solutions for consistent protection.

🔒 Fortinet announces that FortiOS v7.6.x has achieved IEC 62443-4-2 Security Level 4 (SL4) certification, the highest component assurance level for industrial automation and control systems. This complements the company’s IEC 62443-4-1 ML2 accreditation for secure product development and validates FortiOS technical capabilities across identification, integrity, confidentiality, availability, and response requirements. The certification applies across FortiGate platforms running v7.6.x, reinforcing operational resilience for OT and critical infrastructure environments.

🔒 Operational technology (OT) environments differ fundamentally from IT and demand a threat-informed approach to security that balances safety, uptime, and continuity. Traditional IT controls can disrupt industrial processes, so visibility, asset context, segmentation, and collaboration between IT and OT teams are essential. Fortinet recommends phased, visibility-first segmentation aligned with ISA/IEC 62443, OT-aware policies, passive discovery, and tailored protections such as virtual patching and secure remote access.

🛡️Fortinet has achieved IEC 62443-4-1 Maturity Level 2 (ML2) certification for its Secure Product Development Lifecycle (SPDL). This independent certification verifies that Fortinet’s secure development processes are formalized, documented, repeatable, and consistently applied across design, development, verification, validation, release, and maintenance of its security products. SPDL embeds threat modeling, secure-by-design engineering, automated and manual testing, supply chain integrity controls, and a transparent FortiGuard Labs PSIRT vulnerability disclosure process to improve product integrity for IT, OT, and critical infrastructure customers.

🔍 A study by OMICRON based on multi-year deployments of its StationGuard IDS across more than 100 substations, power plants, and control centers found pervasive cybersecurity and operational shortcomings. Passive network monitoring exposed unpatched PAC devices, undocumented external connections, weak segmentation, and incomplete asset inventories—issues often visible within 30 minutes of connection. The findings emphasize the need for protocol-aware, network-level detection and automated asset discovery to meet frameworks such as IEC 62443 and NIST.