McAfee and Siemens said on Monday that the two companies would extend an existing partnership designed to help industrial customers protect against cyber threats.
Under the extended partnership, Siemens industrial security offerings will leverage McAfee’s solutions portfolio to improve reliability and availability for industrial customers and further enhance the joint effort that kicked off in 2011.
According to McAfee, the partnership will complement Siemens’ service offerings by leveraging security solutions such as next generation firewall, security information and event management (SIEM), endpoint security, and global threat intelligence as part of its Managed Security Service as well as offering professional services.
The offerings will provide greater visibility and control at the factory level while reducing the risk of IP theft, McAfee said.
“McAfee’s broad portfolio of security technologies can serve as a great enabler of Siemens Industrial Security service offerings,” said Siegfried Russwurm, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Siemens’ Industry Sector speaking at the Hannover Messe. “This will further strengthen our leading position in automation and drive technologies by providing additional security solutions and services to our industrial customer base.”
“Siemens provides deep experience in automation across numerous industries,” said Michael Fey, worldwide chief technology officer at McAfee. “By combining forces, McAfee, Intel and Siemens can drive the adoption of connected, managed and secured solutions at the plant level in order to help industrial customers to manage their security while bringing the uptime and reliability of the plant operations to a higher level. This collaboration should allow us to address the unique requirements of Industrial Control System customers for the operations technology market thus providing a complete security view across the entire company.”
Additionally, the companies are planning continued cooperation on the development of security products and solutions, specifically based on industrial protocols, that will enhance managed security service offerings for the process and factory automation industry.