Industrial enterprises face an escalating wave of cyberthreats. The challenge lies in the complexity of industrial control systems (ICS), which often rely on legacy technology, lack built-in security and cannot afford downtime. Cyber resilience – ensuring systems can withstand, respond to and recover from attacks – is no longer optional but a business imperative.
The importance of building an effective security operations centre (SOC) cannot be overstated, but it is far easier said than done. The SOC is not a separate system; above all else, it is primarily about people and processes.
To build an effective SOC, organisations must first establish a strong cybersecurity foundation. This begins with comprehensive asset management – identifying and cataloguing all IT and operational technology (OT) assets, including ICS devices and network components, to understand the full attack surface.
A thorough risk assessment should follow, evaluating vulnerabilities, potential threats and operational impacts through frameworks such as IEC 62443 or the Nist Cybersecurity Framework.
With risks identified, essential security controls must be implemented, including OT-specific endpoint protection, firewalls and intrusion detection systems designed to prevent known threats. Once the tools and cybersecurity measures are in place, with integrations and telemetry collection set up, incidents are passed to the security information and event management (Siem) solution, which requires a team to analyse, respond to and investigate threats.
Regular security audits are also critical, providing oversight and ensuring compliance with industry standards and internal policies. Finally, network segmentation – grouping systems into zones and conduits – helps to restrict lateral movement, making it harder for attackers to spread across the environment. Together, these measures help create the operational readiness needed for advanced threat detection and response.
Building a mature SOC
Your SOC is the nerve centre of your organisation’s cyber defence, continuously monitoring, detecting and responding to threats. In industrial environments, a proactive, intelligence-driven SOC is essential – one that goes beyond traditional monitoring. To defend against modern threats, the SOC must integrate three critical components: advanced technology, skilled experts and well-defined processes.
A modern SOC serves as a strategic hub for threat intelligence, risk analysis and coordinated incident response. An effective SOC combines cutting-edge tools with experienced analysts who can interpret data, read analytics and respond appropriately. The human factor is vital – skilled professionals are capable of configuring products correctly, managing alerts and making informed decisions under pressure.
Read: The new reality of enterprise security: scaling resilience amid complexity
Future success depends in large part on an organisation’s ability to grow human capability, upskilling SOC analysts in industrial cybersecurity to ensure they understand OT environments and protocols.
As noted, building an effective SOC is easier said than done, but several elements can help organisations achieve it. First, extended detection and response (XDR) plays a pivotal role by unifying data from endpoints, networks and cloud environments. This correlation enables holistic threat detection, allowing security teams to identify sophisticated attacks that might otherwise slip through isolated security tools.
Second, real-time threat intelligence feeds are essential for staying ahead of adversaries. These feeds deliver immediate updates on emerging malware, newly discovered vulnerabilities and evolving attacker tactics, ensuring the SOC can anticipate and block threats before they cause harm.
Third, you should form an incident response team that unites IT, cybersecurity and OT specialists, and define roles and responsibilities for detection, analysis, prioritisation, containment and recovery. You should also name key stakeholders from legal, finance, marketing and other functions who will aid in non-technical response elements such as regulatory reporting and media management.
Robust incident response capabilities ensure that when a breach occurs, the SOC can swiftly contain and remediate the threat. Rapid response minimises operational disruption, reduces downtime and prevents attackers from moving laterally through critical systems. Here, the expertise of analysts is crucial – they must interpret alerts accurately and act decisively.
Together, these elements transform a standard SOC into a highly effective cybersecurity nerve centre, capable of defending complex industrial networks against even the most advanced threats.
The final piece in the puzzle is effective fault tolerance. In industrial environments, cyberattacks can trigger catastrophic physical consequences – from equipment damage and production shutdowns to safety hazards and environmental incidents. Fault tolerance acts as a safeguard, ensuring that critical operations continue even under attack and preventing operational paralysis. Achieving true fault tolerance requires a multilayered strategy. Redundancy and failover mechanisms form the first line of defence, with backup control systems standing ready to take over if primary systems are compromised.
Training is essential
To ensure ongoing success, you must train your team – it is crucial that your people have the technical skills and know-how to protect your unique industrial environment.
You should mandate regular training focused on ICS, Scada and OT cybersecurity, and encourage cross-team collaboration, as IT, OT and cybersecurity units need to work in tandem to boost fault tolerance and response efficiency.
Read: Addressing the 57% blind spot: Kaspersky on measuring SOC effectiveness
Employees must be trained to recognise phishing attempts, social engineering tactics and insider threats, turning personnel into an active layer of defence. Regular incident response drills sharpen reaction times, ensuring that when an attack occurs the team responds with precision rather than panic.
In the event of an attack, hold an incident response retrospective. A secure environment is not just about having a plan and procedures set out; you should action a full debrief after every cyber incident to learn lessons and build back stronger, updating your plan accordingly.
Resilience is not just about hardware – it must be rigorously tested. Large-scale cyberstorm exercises, simulating attacks such as ransomware outbreaks or denial-of-service assaults, stress-test systems under real-world conditions. These simulations answer critical questions: can the ICS continue functioning at reduced capacity? How quickly can full operations resume after an attack? By identifying weaknesses before adversaries do, organisations can fine-tune their defences.
Secure state recovery is another essential element of fault tolerance. Industrial systems must be able to roll back to a known secure configuration after an incident, minimising downtime. Immutable backups play a key role here, ensuring that even ransomware cannot hold critical data hostage.
Work with the experts
Building mature security operations in industrial environments requires more than tools – it demands a cohesive, adaptive strategy that aligns people, processes and technologies around a shared goal of resilience. By working with third-party experts, organisations can concentrate on their core business without having to worry about integrating capabilities such as real-time network monitoring, tailored endpoint protection and behavioural anomaly detection.
Expert guidance, research and incident response services further enhance fault tolerance and reduce recovery time when the unexpected occurs. Ultimately, cyber resilience is not a static goal but a continuous journey – one that empowers industrial enterprises to operate safely, sustainably and with confidence in an increasingly hostile digital landscape.
To learn more about industrial cyber resilience and ways to protect critical infrastructure, visit Kaspersky’s interactive page.
- The author, Moses Munguti, is technical expert and team lead in Africa at Kaspersky
- Read more articles by Kaspersky on TechCentral
- This promoted content was paid for by the party concerned
