Tenable unveils OT discovery engine to expose cyber-physical risks

Tenable unveiled a new OT asset discovery engine that enables security teams to bring risks associated with cyber-physical systems (OT, IoT, and shadow IT) into a unified view of cyber exposure.

With instant deployment and no additional IT overhead required, Tenable’s new VM-Native OT Discovery capability provides a low-friction entry point for organizations to gain comprehensive IT/OT visibility and accelerate AI-driven exposure management.

According to Gartner, “Cyber and cyber-physical attacks are set to double over the next three years. Cohesive exposure management capability and visibility, across cyber and cyber-physical dimensions, is fast becoming an operational imperative.”

Security teams are responsible for protecting cyber-physical systems, including those present in critical infrastructure. However, gaining visibility often requires time-consuming deployments of specialized hardware, new agents and bolted-on software. Tenable has eliminated this friction by integrating OT discovery directly into its core solutions for risk-based vulnerability management within the Tenable One Exposure Management Platform, no specialized hardware, additional agents or add-ons required.

From the factory floor to AI data centers, HVAC systems to office printers and badge readers, cyber-physical assets represent a rapidly growing and unruly attack surface, stretching far beyond traditional industrial and critical infrastructure. More than half of CISOs are now responsible for OT security, which has remained a dangerous blind spot where IT networks meet cyber-physical systems, and fears of operational disruptions have hindered cybersecurity progress. As a result of this convergence, 45% of modern OT compromises originate in IT environments.

Tenable early access customers from a variety of industries, including hospitality, financial services, education, food and beverage, and government agencies, uncovered a large number of unknown OT and IoT assets upon initial deployments, with most customers uncovering between 100 and 1000+ unique assets, including some with critical vulnerabilities.

Customer benefits of the integrated OT discovery engine include:

• Accelerate OT security compliance: Instant deployment without the need to procure and deploy new sensors, hardware or specialized point solutions enables organizations to adhere to evolving cyber-physical systems regulatory and audit requirements with confidence.
• Eliminate operational blind spots: Gain immediate, foundational visibility into hidden assets and device attributes, including vendor, model, firmware, backplane details, running state and more, without operational disruption.
• Break down security silos: Unite cyber-physical asset and exposure data directly within the Tenable One platform, providing security teams with a complete view of the organization’s total cyber exposure across AI, IT, cloud, identity and OT domains.

“Cyber-physical risk can’t remain a blind spot in exposure management. We’re giving organizations an immediate, low-friction way to bring OT into scope, so they can gain visibility, meet compliance requirements and start reducing risk from day one, without adding new infrastructure,” said Eric Doerr, Chief Product Officer at Tenable. “For existing customers with more complex use cases, we offer Tenable OT Security, a comprehensive OT solution that delivers visibility, security and control for proactive risk reduction across today’s rapidly converging OT/IT environment.”

This new OT Discovery engine is available to all Tenable One, Tenable Vulnerability Management and Tenable Security Center customers.

Tenable also offers Tenable OT Security, a unified OT/IT security solution that delivers continuous monitoring and threat detection capabilities for cyber-physical systems as part of the Tenable One Exposure Management Platform. Tenable One customers benefit from complete data interoperability across solutions, with the ability to deploy any combination of tools across teams to suit the unique needs of their environment.