by Jared Weiner | 10/17/2023

Honeywell (NASDAQ: HON) welcomed more than 200 customers, partners, industry analysts, and media members to this year’s Honeywell Connect conference, a software- and digital transformation-focused event held last week in Dallas, Texas. The event featured a wide range of executive presentations, customer success stories, roundtable discussions, expert-led breakout sessions, and technology demonstrations in which Honeywell Connected Enterprise (HCE) emphasized its identity as a software company by highlighting its quickly-maturing capabilities in the areas of industrial cybersecurity, industrial IoT, and sustainability.

Honeywell (NASDAQ: HON) welcomed more than 200 customers, partners, industry analysts, and media members to this year’s Honeywell Connect conference, a software- and digital transformation-focused event held last week in Dallas, Texas. The event featured a wide range of executive presentations, customer success stories, roundtable discussions, expert-led breakout sessions, and technology demonstrations in which Honeywell Connected Enterprise (HCE) emphasized its identity as a software company by highlighting its quickly-maturing capabilities in the areas of industrial cybersecurity, industrial IoT, and sustainability.

Honeywell’s approach throughout its many solution presentations and demos was very outcome-oriented. With each speaker detailing the enterprise-level outcomes its customers would be able to achieve rather than merely listing product-level features and functions, it was easy to appreciate Honeywell’s vision for a fully connected, integrated, secure, and sustainable industrial future.

Equally noteworthy—and something that makes Honeywell unique in this space—is the company’s continued dedication to using each of its software solutions in its own facilities. Effectively serving internal stakeholders is a considerable challenge that, executed correctly, can help generate unfiltered feedback unlikely to be found in traditional customer interactions. This customer zero strategy is critical in strengthening its solution development efforts, and is among the most impactful competitive advantages Honeywell has over its competitors in this space.

Finally, Honeywell HCE announced a new cybersecurity offering during the show, a solution called Cyber Watch. The first new solution borne from Honeywell’s acquisition of SCADAfence earlier this year, Cyber Watch is an enterprise-level solution that provides access to near real-time and historical data on OT- and IIoT-related vulnerabilities, compliance and threats to help organizations reduce and manage cybersecurity risks across multiple sites. Cyber Watch is part of the Honeywell Forge Cybersecurity+ Suite.

In general, the adoption of ICS suppliers’ cybersecurity solutions will remain mostly aligned with that of their ICS business, as customers using an ICS supplier for these solutions will typically select whichever supplier is the primary vendor within their environment. However, Honeywell’s dedication to effectively protecting non-Honeywell assets and environments—reinforced by its acquisition of ICS-agnostic SCADAfence—may allow it to outpace its ICS competitors in this area. Overall, Honeywell’s unique combination of cybersecurity functionality, domain-specific control systems expertise, and managed services capabilities will be a critical growth driver in its continued efforts to grow its cybersecurity business in Honeywell and non-Honeywell environments.

To learn more about VDC’s coverage of industrial technologies, including our recently-published study on industrial cybersecurity, visit our website or contact us for more details!