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Search every verified Ashish Agrawal interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Ashish Agarwal, Director of Operational Technology at Agco, discussed the role of visibility in OT cybersecurity in an October 2024 appearance. He described visibility as a "foundational piece" of a cybersecurity program, stating that without knowing how many OT devices an organization has, it cannot produce solutions for connectivity or protection. Agarwal noted that three years prior, his organization began its cybersecurity journey with no knowledge of its OT devices and started by manually collecting data in a spreadsheet. He identified legacy technology as a challenge to attaining visibility, explaining that 15- to 20-year-old machines that work perfectly cannot communicate with current protocols, requiring solutions to convert their data. Agarwal also highlighted the next challenge as IoT devices embedding 5G adapters that vendors want direct open internet access to for maintenance, which his organization addresses by enforcing firewall routes and not allowing direct 5G or 4G connections. In a September 2023 appearance at the ET Annual Gas Conclave, Agarwal, then Managing Director & CEO of Seros Logistics, praised the event for its relevant speakers and diverse topics. He stated that hearing different perspectives and sharing one's own perspective, along with audience engagement, makes an event successful. Agarwal expressed excitement about a panel on opportunities of 60 billion dollars in the space, noting that it allows for holistic decision-making by hearing everyone's views rather than taking decisions in silos.
“Visibility is very very critical and foundation piece of cyber security program. Without knowing how many OT devices we have, we cannot produce a solution for connectivity or protect them behind the firewall or segmentation.”
“Three years back when we started our cybersecurity journey, we had no clue how many OT devices we had in our environment and started manually collecting that data in a spreadsheet, which was a good start.”
“The biggest challenge to attaining visibility is legacy technology and many machines are not even connected, requiring a lot of manual physical effort to identify those devices.”
“Understanding the business value of OT cybersecurity is critical because it not only protects assets from outside threats but also provides insights into manufacturing operations that help define better planning and execution.”
“Legacy machines that are 15 to 20 years old work perfectly fine but cannot communicate with current technology protocols, so we implement solutions that convert their data into a language we can understand, which creates additional work for security patching and management.”
“We do not want anybody to have open access to our network and connect to our machines without us knowing what they are doing; remote access must be controlled and managed carefully.”
“Partnership between IT/OT and manufacturing maintenance teams is key; it's not just an IT initiative but an OT initiative where manufacturing owns the process and access control.”
“We are segmenting our manufacturing operations in a completely isolated form and implementing zero trust on top of it, so nobody has direct connection to our factory OT devices.”
“The next big challenge is IoT devices embedding 5G adapters that vendors want direct open internet access to for maintenance, which we are addressing by enforcing firewall routes and not allowing direct 5G or 4G connections.”
“Any conference or events that we go is really made up with two things: one is what is the kind of people who are there and secondly what is the expert sort of panel which is there. Very happy to see very relevant speakers and diverse range of topics being covered.”
“Hearing the different perspectives and sharing your own perspective and getting the right kind of audience involvement, engagement and questions is what makes any event successful.”
“I definitely see this event as one event on any of the companies in this sector as a permanent event, you know, go-to event on their calendar.”
“You’re not taking decisions in silos; you have the benefit of hearing everyone's views and then finally shape your view. You also have the pulse of what people are seeing and thinking and therefore when you go back you have a very holistic perspective in your decision making at your organization.”
“I'm really excited to see the panel on opportunities of 60 billion dollars in this space and that’s something which I'm very excited about to hear what different people are seeing where the investments are going to go into and come from.”
Ashish Agarwal, Director Operational Technology at Agco, discusses the foundational need for complete visibility and asset ...
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