Dragos has been named a Leader in Forrester's assessment of Operational Technology Security Solutions and received the highest score in the Strategy category.
It also earned the highest possible scores in eight criteria: vision; innovation; adoption and community; threat and anomaly detection; OT-specific incident investigation and response; IT and OT convergence support and SOC integration depth; and OT security services.
Forrester said operational technology environments are now closely linked with enterprise IT, cloud platforms and third-party service providers, changing their risk profile. Security approaches centred on perimeter controls and asset visibility alone, it said, are no longer enough.
That shift has become a central theme in the industrial cybersecurity market, where vendors are trying to address a broader operating environment spanning traditional plant systems, connected software and external service relationships.
Dragos describes that wider estate as extended operational technology, or xOT. Its platform is designed to secure critical infrastructure and manufacturing environments by combining asset visibility, operational context, continuous monitoring, vulnerability management and threat detection.
"We built the Dragos Platform for the environment as it exists, not as it was categorised," said Robert M. Lee, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Dragos.
"Operational environments have extended beyond the boundaries the industry historically drew around OT. Power grids, pipelines, manufacturing facilities and data centres now depend on a wider range of technologies connected to and capable of affecting operations. Together, those technologies make up xOT, and adversaries are already operating across them. Defenders need visibility, intelligence and control that reach just as far," Lee said.
Dragos said its underlying intelligence system has been built from more than a decade of operational telemetry, adversary research and incident response. It also pointed to its EmberAI tool, which it said helps analysts move from alerts to action using adversary data.
Broader push
Recent corporate moves have widened the platform's scope. Accenture's majority stake investment will bring runZero, which focuses on exposure management, and NetRise, which focuses on software supply chain risk, under Dragos management, according to the company.
That expansion reflects a wider trend in industrial security as providers seek to cover more of the connected systems that affect operations, rather than focusing only on traditional control networks.
Dragos has also expanded its partnership with Microsoft. The Dragos Platform is being deployed on Microsoft Azure and integrated with Microsoft Sentinel and Defender, the company said.
Jodi Schatz, Chief Product Officer at Dragos, linked the latest recognition to the company's broader platform and services approach.
"For us, this recognition reflects years of work building an ecosystem that includes our platform, intelligence and services that elevates and encompasses the full operations for xOT environments," Schatz said.
"Attack timelines have compressed from months to weeks to days, and security teams need the knowledge, tools and services to ensure the security and resiliency of their entire xOT footprint. Our commitment has been constant and unwavering because safeguarding civilisation is and has always been our mission. The investments we've made in our development of new and innovative methodologies, and technologies, and partnerships are all in service of giving customers the strongest and most comprehensive xOT defence across their industrial footprint," Schatz said.
Analyst attention
Forrester's written assessment of Dragos said: "Dragos's vision takes a comprehensive view of the IT and OT interconnection while focusing on the importance of cyber resilience for industrial control systems."
The latest ranking adds to a series of analyst endorsements cited by Dragos over the past year. The company said it had also been named a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for CPS Protection Platforms, a Leader in Omdia's Market Radar for OT Cybersecurity Platforms, and a Leader and number one in innovation in Frost & Sullivan's Frost Radar for OT Cybersecurity Solutions.
The attention underlines increasing scrutiny of suppliers serving industrial operators, utilities and manufacturers as cyber risks spread across interconnected operational and enterprise systems. In that environment, vendors are being judged not only on asset discovery and monitoring, but also on incident response, intelligence, integration with security operations centres, and the ability to manage converged IT and OT estates.
Forrester said traditional OT security approaches built on perimeter controls and asset visibility are no longer sufficient.