F&B Manufacturer Implements Powerful Cybersecurity

A mid-market food and beverage manufacturer operating across 10 facilities in Australia faced a critical cybersecurity gap as operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) networks converged. Legacy OT systems — PLCs, SCADA controllers, and industrial sensors — were designed for network isolation, not connectivity, leaving security teams with limited visibility into threats crossing the OT/IT boundary. As regulatory scrutiny of food safety systems and critical infrastructure protection intensified, the absence of integrated monitoring created unacceptable compliance and operational risk. Without actionable intelligence from plant-floor systems, the organization had no reliable way to detect threats that could disrupt production, compromise product integrity, or trigger regulatory penalties.

The manufacturer deployed Claroty Continuous Threat Detection (CTD), a purpose-built OT security platform that passively monitors industrial network traffic to identify threats, anomalies, and policy violations without interrupting live production systems. Claroty CTD applies machine learning-driven behavioral analysis to establish a baseline of normal OT network activity across connected assets, then surfaces only high-fidelity alerts — significantly reducing the false positive noise that overwhelms security teams in complex industrial environments. Rockwell Automation's professional services team provided domain expertise across every phase: design, installation, and commissioning, ensuring the solution integrated correctly with the manufacturer's existing OT architecture. A phased rollout was adopted, targeting four of the ten Australian sites first to validate the deployment model and detection configuration before expanding to the remaining facilities.

Four of ten Australian sites have been successfully deployed, with the remaining six facilities in the rollout pipeline. From initial deployment, the manufacturer gained end-to-end OT/IT visibility — security telemetry began flowing immediately, eliminating the monitoring blind spots that had previously left plant-floor systems exposed. A measurable operational benefit has been the reduction of false positive and irrelevant alerts, which previously triggered unnecessary downtime investigations and diverted engineering resources. Security teams now receive actionable intelligence rather than alert noise:

• 4 of 10 Australian sites live, remainder queued for rollout
• Full OT/IT visibility established from day one of each deployment
• Alert fatigue reduced through tuned, high-fidelity threat detection

• Passive, agentless OT monitoring is non-negotiable in food and beverage environments — active scanning risks disrupting live production and is generally incompatible with OT protocols.
• Phased rollouts across sites allow teams to validate detection baselines and alert logic before scaling, significantly reducing deployment risk.
• OT/IT convergence projects require specialist expertise at commissioning; vendor professional services involvement prevents integration errors that are costly to correct post-deployment.
• Alert tuning must begin immediately — unchecked false positives erode team confidence and drive alert fatigue, undermining the value of the entire monitoring investment.
• End-to-end visibility is a prerequisite for compliance, not a byproduct; instrumentation strategy should be defined before deployment begins.