Rockwell Automation: SecureOT Platform – OT Endpoint Protection Whitepaper
November 14, 2025
Discover the Challenges in OT/ICS Security and the Vendor-Neutral Platform That Centralizes Visibility & Automates Protection
OT Endpoint Protection: The Challenges
Are you still tracking OT assets on spreadsheets? OT endpoint protection is a necessity to protect the world’s infrastructure, but in many cases, it’s not deployed due to several key challenges. The unique characteristics of OT networks make running traditional endpoint protection solutions very difficult if not impossible.
Challenge 1: Managing a Diverse Fleet of Devices
The vast majority of devices in an OT network do not run on traditional operating systems like Windows, Unix, or Linux. Instead, they operate on proprietary OEM protocols. Many environments also rely on legacy systems alongside new IoT devices—and this mix doesn’t speak the same language.
Challenge 2: Complex Windows-Based Integrations
The processes these systems control are usually more sensitive than traditional IT processes. For instance, you can’t reboot your turbine controls when you run an update without risking operational downtime—which can lead to significant safety risks and financial loss.
Challenge 3: Cost & Resource Constraints
Many of these systems operate in remote environments. This creates a need for a solution that is low-cost and easy to use. The challenge is finding a solution that doesn’t require a team of specialized experts to implement and maintain.
Challenge 4: Time-Consuming Manual Processes
Updating and patching require accessing hundreds of non-IT applications and OT vendor websites. This is a slow, manual effort that can take weeks of work. It often involves physically visiting each device with a new memory stick to upload updates—which leads to inefficiency and increased risk.
Challenge 5: Lack of Centralized Visibility
Current solutions are often provided by automation vendors themselves. This leads to a patchwork of solutions across a corporate OT network—with each vendor managing their own equipment. Unfortunately, this approach results in a lack of visibility across the entire network and creates a significant security risk.
As a result of these challenges, endpoint protection management is hugely time-consuming or is just simply not done. Leaving critical infrastructure vulnerable.
OT Endpoint Protection: The Solution
Recognizing these challenges, Rockwell Automation has leveraged more than 25 years of ICS engineering experience to build SecureOT Platform.
SecureOT Platform delivers complete OT endpoint protection and directly addresses the visibility and complexity of the challenges you face every day.
Their team has experience operating SecureOT Platform in various plants and control systems across all vendors. They have been in your shoes and understand the unique complexities of these systems. SecureOT Platform was intentionally built to be an OT-safe, effective solution to address the unique challenges of industrial environments.
Key Elements of SecureOT Platform
SecureOT Platform includes six critical elements, each designed to address the specific challenges of OT environments:
Element 1: Light, Non-Disruptive Agent
SecureOT Platform Agent allows for flexibility, scalability, is and lightweight in nature that it operates across automation vendor equipment without disruption. Rockwell Automation’s solution is proven by over a decade of use in live plant environments.
Element 2: Complete Asset Visibility
SecureOT Platform Agentless Device Interface extends visibility to your unmanaged assets, including relays, RTUs, IEDs, and PLCs. It gathers configurations from these proprietary protocols so you can see and manage your assets from a single platform.
Element 3: Low-Cost & Scalable Architecture
Rockwell Automation’s proprietary software allows you to efficiently reach remote locations and automatically identify new devices as they are added to the network.
Element 4: Centralized Asset Management
The user-interface brings together all of this information into a searchable and automated asset management system to provide full visibility and actionability.
Element 5: Automated, Close-Loop Patch Management
SecureOT Platform Managed Services accesses and reviews patches from hundreds of OT vendors monthly. Rockwell Automation integrates these updates directly into their platform for automated deployment. This frees up valuable engineering time for your team so they can focus on more strategic tasks. This service works across vendors, so you don’t need to manage multiple systems.
Element 6: OT-Specific Application Allowlisting
Using a best-in-class allowlisting product, Rockwell Automation applies their years of experience across major OEM systems to develop the necessary customizations. This permits you to truly lock down allow listing for your unique environment and avoid the disruptions caused by generic IT solutions.
SecureOT Platform: The Benefits
The result is a solution that not only delivers true endpoint protection for your OT assets, but does so safely, effectively, and efficiently.
Benefit 1: Reduced Operational Costs & Complexity
Because SecureOT Platform operates across vendors and integrates various elements of endpoint protection into a single platform, you eliminate the need for multiple vendor contracts, specialized training, and excessive manual labor. The deployment and ongoing labor costs to manage protection are significantly reduced.
Benefit 2: OT Safe
Rockwell Automation has embedded over 25 years of industrial controls engineering into SecureOT Platform, prioritizing safety and reliability before security. SecureOT Platform operates on the principle of “first, do no harm.” The technology has operated in industrial environments for over a decade with zero operational disruption to their clients.
Benefit 3: Greater Network Visibility
Go beyond manual spreadsheets and databases. Rockwell Automation’s platform provides automated asset identification, inventory, and management across all OT assets, not just Windows boxes. This gives you real-time, accurate data critical for both security and regulatory compliance.
Benefit 4: Automated Patch Management
Closed-loop update service takes the headache out of patch management. They bring their scale and automation to identify, review, and deploy patches exactly when and where you want. This frees up your team’s time from manual patch hunting and deployment, allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks.
Benefit 5: Fundamentally More Secure Networks
By providing a complete view of configuration changes, patch status, and the ability to deploy updates regularly—and in many cases, in combination with Rockwell Automation’s optional OT application allowlisting—their clients’ networks can become fundamentally more secure and resilient against evolving threats.
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