OT Cybersecurity at the Core of Smart Manufacturing

Built on decades of cybersecurity expertise but grounded in over 100 years of industrial automation and manufacturing development, we apply practical risk management practices and manage the complexity of OT environments within modern operations. We do this across cybersecurity as a foundation, but also incorporate system health, environmental factors, obsolescence, safety, resilience and general capacity into the mix as OT requires all of these to be successful, not just annotation of vulnerabilities and exploits.

How Manufacturers Strengthen Cybersecurity Capabilities

Improving cybersecurity in industrial environments requires a structured approach. Manufacturers that see the most progress focus on continuous improvement over time instead of one-time projects.

Rockwell Automation supports this through a five-step model:

Assess

Manufacturers begin by understanding their current environment. This includes identifying assets, evaluating network architecture, identifying gaps and prioritizing risk across IT and OT systems.

Design

Develop a tailored roadmap that aligns to business priorities and operational risk. Build a defensible architecture that supports production.

Implement

Organizations deploy prioritized security controls focusing on improving visibility and reducing risk without interrupting operations.

Manage

With systems in place, manufacturers shift to continuous monitoring and management. This includes prioritized risk remediation, monitoring activity and staying ahead of potential threats.

Optimize

Cybersecurity evolves alongside modernization. Organizations improve their security posture as digital connectivity expands and aging infrastructure is managed. Essentially, engineering risk out over time.

A Practical Example: Church & Dwight

As a global manufacturer, Church & Dwight recognized the need to strengthen cybersecurity across its OT infrastructure. The company’s leadership identified a clear priority to improve visibility across IT and OT networks to help protect manufacturing operations.

Following the mandate to expand the company’s manufacturing cybersecurity program to include new capabilities for lowering cyber risk, Church & Dwight leveraged detailed cybersecurity assessments executed by Rockwell Automation across multiple facilities. The findings from these assessments were presented as a prioritized risk reduction approach to build a business case for strategic cybersecurity enhancements to reduce risk.   Partnering with IT, cybersecurity and OT manufacturing teams, Church & Dwight prioritized their path forward in a collaborative and proactive setting.

This approach led to several important objectives:

• Clear visibility across OT networks and assets
• Ability to add context to risk severity for prioritized action
• IT and OT cybersecurity together in a holistic program
• Enhanced security monitoring practices across facilities for known and unknown threats

The results extended beyond technology. As visibility improved, manufacturing teams recognized their own roles in maintaining performance and began to engage more directly with cybersecurity efforts.  

This example highlights that cybersecurity becomes most effective when it is integrated into daily operations and strengthened by collaboration across teams.

Security as the Foundation for Scalable Operations

The State of Smart Manufacturing report findings reinforce that cybersecurity empowers modern industrial operations. Organizations must build secure foundations that support the expanded connected systems throughout the company.

Without a secure, integrated foundation across IT and OT environments, advanced capabilities cannot scale safely, and organizations cannot run autonomous systems with confidence.

For manufacturers, cybersecurity shapes how they design systems, manage risk and execute in real time.

Organizations that approach cybersecurity as an operational capability are better positioned to maintain performance in increasingly complex environments. They protect not only their systems, but their ability to deliver.

The findings in this blog are from our 11th annual State of Smart Manufacturing Report. This yearly publication provides benchmark data, best practices and key insights from manufacturers at all stages of digital transformation worldwide. Please visit rok.auto/sosm to download the full report.