IoT Company PAS, Siemens Pair Up To 'Bridge The Visibility Gap' For Manufacturing Assets

PAS, a startup focused on securing connected manufacturing floors, has announced it will team up with industrial heavyweight Siemens to help better secure operational technology.

Siemens and PAS will partner "bring the best in breed technology" that helps manufacturing companies gain stronger visibility and security across legacy control assets and industrial control systems, particularly in the oil and gas and utility sectors.

"We're very excited about the partnership with PAS, which is targeted both at the problem set we're looking to solve together, but also what we can do to help mature the industry as a whole," Leo Simonovich, Siemens Vice President for Global Cyber Security, told CRN. "On the macro level, industrial cybersecurity is the new frontier of security … it's significant because if there's a hack on the OT side, it can potentially have catastrophic consequences. The problem we need to solve is the monitoring challenge … understanding what assets you have, prioritizing them for security and monitoring them."

[Related: Industrial IoT Security Company PAS Raises $40 Million Funding To 'Aggressively' Expand Go-To MarketChannel]

The partnership will help companies gain better visibility to detect and respond effectively to attacks on their environment, but will also provide customers with deep analytics required to identify assets from multiple vendors, and secure both proprietary and non-proprietary control systems.

PAS offers analytics and "decades of control system knowledge" to help companies identify potential vulnerabilities, while Siemens can provide insights on vulnerabilities through managed services to help customers understand what's happening on the device, "from the field to the control system to the network," said Simonovich.

The two vendors hope to bring joint solutions to the table to help customers monitor their entire operating environment at the fleet level, which Simonovich said, "is key because attackers can jump from site to site quickly."

As more manufacturers connect their assets to the network, operational technology teams are becoming increasingly aware of the security risks they could potentially face.

"Over the years there has been this dichotomy between IT and OT," PAS CEO Eddie Habibi told CRN. "OT understands industrial control systems and IT understands IT, but they are frightened of each other's businesses. We have jointly helped in bringing those two disciplines together and providing a comprehensive framework to help bridge the visibility gap from a cultural and technological standpoint."

Houston's PAS, a security firm focused on industrial control systems, has raised $40 million as the company looks to expand its channel program for operational technology (OT) security.

PAS, which provides security for industrial control systems – including distributed control systems, programmable logic controllers, turbomachinery controls, and compressor control systems – wants to broaden its sales approach and involve new system integrators.

"One of the reasons for our news is to establish and expand our channel strategy," Habibi told CRN at the time of the announcement. "We're very aggressive about [building out a channel]. We're hopeful that by the end of the year we will have established a network of system integrators large and small."

Habibi said moving forward, the partnership is "really crucial" from a channels and distribution standpoint, as PAS now as the option to integrate its solutions with other partners in the Siemens ecosystem.

PAS received its $40 million growth investment from Tinicum, a private investment partnership focused on late-stage investments in manufacturing, energy, technology, and infrastructure.