The growing reliance on Internet of Things (IoT) devices in various industries brings numerous benefits in terms of efficiency, automation, and digital transformation. However, it also introduces additional risks and an expanding attack surface. To mitigate these risks, a comprehensive IoT security strategy is essential. This blog post explores Forescout’s zero trust approach, which provides actionable visibility, automated risk-based segmentation, and compliance enforcement for every IoT, OT, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), and IT device without requiring an agent.
Complete Device Visibility and Classification: Forescout’s solution offers complete visibility into both managed and unmanaged IoT, IoMT, OT devices, and IP-connected systems as soon as they connect to your network. This visibility enables organizations to gain real-time insight and continuous monitoring of IoT device communications and risky behaviors. With this level of visibility, security teams can effectively assess and identify IoT devices with weak credentials and automate policy actions to enforce strong passwords.
Dynamic Network Segmentation: Implementing dynamic network segmentation is crucial for securing IoT devices. Forescout helps organizations segment devices into trusted zones by enforcing least-privilege access through zero trust policies. This ensures that only authorized devices can access specific areas of the network, limiting the potential for lateral movement and reducing the overall attack surface.
Automated Zero Trust Policy Orchestration: Forescout’s solution goes beyond visibility and segmentation by automating unified zero trust policy orchestration across multi-vendor environments and multiple network domains. This automation streamlines security operations, reduces manual efforts, and ensures consistent policy enforcement. By applying a zero trust approach, organizations can significantly enhance their security posture and protect against emerging threats.
Asset Inventory and Lifecycle Management: Efficiently managing the inventory and lifecycle of every device is a critical aspect of IoT security. Forescout’s platform provides comprehensive asset inventory and lifecycle management capabilities. From the moment a device connects to the network until its end-of-life, organizations can effectively track and manage their IoT devices. This helps in maintaining an accurate inventory, tracking vulnerabilities, and implementing timely updates and patches.
- Forescout Differentiators – IoT Cybersecurity: Forescout offers several key differentiators that make it a reliable choice for implementing IoT security:
- Actionable Visibility: Forescout's unified platform instantly discovers every device, whether IoT, IoMT, ICS/OT, or IT, as soon as it connects to the network.
- Automated Device Classification: Leveraging a three-dimensional classification taxonomy, Forescout automatically classifies devices based on their function and type, operating system and version, and vendor and model.
- Automated Segmentation: Forescout enables automated segmentation based on device classification, leveraging passively collected data. This eliminates alert fatigue by automatically taking appropriate actions.
Scalability: Forescout’s solution has been proven to scale with deployments of over 2 million devices and across thousands of locations, making it suitable for enterprise-level IoT security needs.
As organisations increasingly adopt IoT devices for their operations, prioritising IoT security becomes paramount. Forescout’s zero trust approach provides the necessary capabilities to automate IoT security, eliminate blind spots, and ensure comprehensive protection for every connected device. By leveraging complete device visibility, dynamic network segmentation, automated policy orchestration, and robust asset inventory management, organizations can mitigate risks and confidently embrace the benefits of the IoT landscape.
