Siemens announces partnership to improve cybersecurity

Siemens has struck a partnership with a technology company called Chronicle to protect the energy industry’s critical infrastructure from cyber threats.

The partnership was announced last week at Siemens technology and innovation conference, called Spotlight on Innovation. Siemens will leverage Chronicle’s Backstory platform along with its strength in industrial cyber security to give customers insights and information on threats. The energy industry has not effectively used analytics to identify malicious threats within operational technology (OT) systems.

Small and medium-sized companies are even more vulnerable to security breaches as they often don’t have the internal expertise to address increasingly sophisticated attacks.

“The innovative partnership between Siemens and Chronicle demonstrates a new frontier in applying the power of security analytics to critical infrastructure that is increasingly dependent on digital technology,” Leo Simonovich, vice president and global head, Industrial Cyber and Digital Security at Siemens Gas and Power, said. “Cyber-attacks targeting energy companies have reached unprecedented speeds, and our cutting-edge managed service unlocks the analytics ecosystem offers a new level of protection from potential operational, business, and safety losses.”

The partnership will help energy companies securely and cost-effectively leverage the cloud to store and categorize data while applying analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to OT systems that can identify patterns, anomalies, and cyber threats. Chronicle’s Backstory will be the backbone of Siemens industrial cyber monitoring efforts.

“Energy infrastructure is an obvious example of cyber-attacks affecting the physical world and directly impacting people’s lives,” Ansh Patnaik, chief product officer, Chronicle, said. “Backstory’s security telemetry processing capabilities, combined with Siemens’ deep expertise, gives customers new options for protecting their operations.”