Tenable has expanded its exposure management platform with instant OT discovery, aiming to help security teams bring cyber-physical risk into view without the usual deployment overhead.
The new capability, built into Tenable One, is designed to surface assets across OT, IoT and shadow IT so organisations can unify cyber exposure management across IT and operational environments.
OT discovery without friction
The company says the VM-Native OT Discovery feature can be deployed immediately, without specialist hardware, extra agents or bolt-on software, giving security teams a faster route to visibility across the attack surface.
The vendor claims that matters because cyber-physical assets now extend far beyond traditional factories and critical infrastructure, reaching AI data centres, HVAC systems, office printers and badge readers.
Tenable says early access customers across hospitality, financial services, education, food and beverage, and government have uncovered large numbers of previously unknown OT and IoT assets, with many finding between 100 and 1,000-plus unique assets, including critical vulnerabilities.
Rising operational risk
Tenable’s announcement comes as the boundary between IT and OT continues to blur. More than half of CISOs are now responsible for OT security, and Tenable cites data showing that 45% of modern OT compromises originate in IT environments.
Gartner has also warned that cyber and cyber-physical attacks are expected to double over the next three years, saying cohesive exposure management across both domains is becoming an operational imperative. That makes unified visibility increasingly important for organisations that need to manage risk without disrupting operations.
Compliance and visibility
The integrated engine is intended to help teams accelerate compliance by enabling immediate visibility into device attributes such as vendor, model, firmware, backplane details and running state.
It also claims this can help organisations address evolving cyber-physical systems regulatory and audit requirements more confidently, while also reducing security silos by combining cyber-physical data with exposure information already held in the platform.
“Cyber-physical risk can’t remain a blind spot in exposure management,” said Eric Doerr, chief product officer at Tenable.
“We’re giving organisations an immediate, low-friction way to bring OT into scope, so they can gain visibility, meet compliance requirements and start reducing risk from day one, without adding new infrastructure.” Eric Doerr
He added that customers with more complex needs can use Tenable OT Security for broader visibility, security and control across converging OT/IT environments.
