IT AND OT CONVERGENCE IN OIL AND GAS INCREASED BUSINESS BENEFITS ALSO LEAD TO INCREASED RISK
Dr Rajiv Shah, General Manager Australia, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence
The oil and gas industry has been relatively quick to establish convergence between operational and business information systems, but this results in the need for better methodologies for countering the threat posed by cyber attacks.
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ince the first industrial revolution, operational technology (OT) has been central to the global economy. It keeps industrial networks and processes running, letting business automate industrial activity where possible — thereby delivering efficiency and control. As networking technology has changed almost everything about our professional and personal lives, two separate silos have developed: the OT environment, which sits separate from other technology; and the information technology (IT) environment, which connects to the world via the internet. Due to the growth of the internet, cloud, the Internet of Things and internet protocol-based communications, another, quieter revolution is taking place. This revolution is the convergence of OT and IT. OT networks tend to be based on legacy technologies and, in the past, have been kept physically separated, or ‘air gapped’, from
20 WHAT'S NEW IN PROCESS TECHNOLOGY - SEPTEMBER 2015
anything connected to the outside world. But today, by connecting these systems to corporate IT systems, businesses can increase efficiencies, drive cost savings, cut delivery timeframes, improve decision-making capabilities and enhance competitiveness. The oil and gas industry is one area where the convergence of the OT and IT environments has become common. As they grow geographically, companies rely more on technology, analytics and automation to stay competitive. This includes deploying components, systems and people that can communicate and share information with each other in real time. The benefits are particularly attractive to those companies that have been hit by diminishing profits as a result of commodity price uncertainty and hard-to-reach resource reserves. The main reasons these organisations are driven to converge IT and OT systems are the need for automation, the need for operational excellence and the need to adapt to changing working conditions.
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