Communicating security levels to customers in industrial and regulated environments is less about a single score or label and more about providing clear, evidence-backed information about how you manage security risk across the product lifecycle.
Focus on evidence, not marketing labels
Avoid vague claims like “military grade” or “secure by design” without specifics. In regulated and safety-critical contexts, customers usually want:
- Which standards, frameworks, or company policies your product aligns with.
- What concrete controls are implemented (technical, procedural, physical).
- How you manage vulnerabilities, updates, and configuration in brownfield plants.
- What assumptions you make about the customer’s network and operational environment.
Make it explicit that no product is “100% secure,” and that overall risk depends on customer deployment, integration quality, and operational discipline.
Define and publish a security level model
If you want a repeatable way to describe security levels, define an internal model and share it with customers. For example:
- Security Level 1: Basic hardening, authentication, role-based access, patchable firmware/software, logging. Assumes a reasonably segmented network and basic OT security hygiene.
- Security Level 2: Adds secure boot / code signing, stronger credential policies, remote update controls, role separation, more granular audit trails, and integration with customer identity management where feasible.
- Security Level 3: Enhances resilience and monitoring: tamper detection, detailed security logging, remote attestation where supported, stricter supply-chain controls for software components, and documented integration patterns for secure architectures.
Clarify that this is your internal classification, not a formal regulatory designation. Map it to known frameworks (for example, IEC 62443 concepts) where appropriate, and explain any differences or gaps.
Use structured documentation instead of promises
Rather than a single statement on a data sheet, provide a set of versioned, controlled documents, for example:
- Product security overview: High-level description of security objectives, threat assumptions, and key capabilities per product family.
- Security hardening guide: Step-by-step configuration guidance for typical OT/IT environments, including what is required from the customer (network segmentation, identity management, backup procedures).
- Vulnerability management and update policy: How you handle vulnerabilities, patch release cadence, support windows, and how customers receive notifications.
- Bill of materials transparency: Where possible, a software/firmware component list to support customer SBOM processes and risk reviews.
- Change history: Versioned release notes for security-relevant changes (for example, new crypto, protocol changes, hardened defaults).
In regulated environments, treat these as controlled documents under your quality or information security management system, with traceable revision history.
Align with industrial cybersecurity standards where possible
Many customers will anchor their evaluation on known standards, even if they are not mandating full certification. Where appropriate, describe:
- Which parts of standards like IEC 62443 you considered during design or deployment guidance.
- Which control families or requirements your product can help support (for example, identification and authentication control, use control, data confidentiality, restricted data flow).
- What remains the customer’s responsibility (for example, network zoning, SOC monitoring, log retention, incident response).
Be explicit when there is no formal certification. You can state that you “designed with reference to” or “aligned practices with” a standard, but avoid implying compliance that has not been independently assessed and documented.
Describe lifecycle and support, not just features
For long-lived industrial assets, customers care as much about how security is maintained as about capabilities on day one. Communicate:
- Support horizon: How long you plan to provide security updates for major versions.
- Update paths: How updates are delivered (local, remote, via integrators), how they can be validated, and any downtime implications.
- Configuration and asset management: How customers can inventory devices, monitor configuration drift, and maintain baselines in plants with many vendors.
- End-of-life policy: How you handle products that can no longer be updated securely and how you communicate those risks.
Clarify what you test and validate before releasing security updates, especially where plant downtime and requalification are major concerns.
Address brownfield and coexistence explicitly
Most customers will integrate your product into mixed-vendor, legacy MES/ERP/SCADA environments. Your communication should acknowledge:
- Any legacy protocols or modes that remain for compatibility and their security limitations.
- Secure configuration options that may require disabling or restricting legacy features.
- Integration patterns for common architectures (for example, DMZ placement, jump hosts, data diodes).
- Known constraints when connecting to older systems that cannot support stronger authentication or encryption.
Where there are tradeoffs between security and interoperability, state them plainly and suggest mitigations (for example, compensating controls such as additional network zoning or monitoring).
Support customer audits and risk assessments
Security communication should be structured so it can be consumed in vendor risk assessments, audits, and qualification efforts. Helpful practices include:
- Maintaining a standard “product security & privacy fact sheet” per major product line, under document control.
- Providing a standard response package for typical security questionnaires (for example, controls summary, architecture views, process descriptions).
- Ensuring internal consistency across marketing, data sheets, manuals, and security documentation.
- Making it clear how customers can request more detailed information under NDA, if needed.
Do not commit to security behaviors that are not fully backed by your processes, tooling, and resourcing. In regulated environments, unsupported claims quickly become liability and audit findings.
Be transparent about limits and shared responsibility
Finally, communicate what your product does not do:
- List known limitations (for example, no encryption for specific legacy interfaces, no local log tamper-protection, limited identity integration).
- Clarify that plant-wide security outcomes depend on customer policies, network design, maintenance, and monitoring.
- State that the information you provide is for risk evaluation and design decisions, not a guarantee of regulatory compliance or safety.
This level of honesty usually increases credibility with experienced OT, quality, and IT teams who must manage real-world risk across long equipment lifecycles.
