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Life Sciences & Pharmaceuticals
Secure Pharmaceutical Pipelines, Safeguard IP, and Maintain GxP Compliance with Agentless Network Intelligence
ExtraHop provides passive, real-time network intelligence to safeguard drug formulas and proprietary pharmaceutical IP. The RevealX platform helps to eliminate unmanaged OT device blind spots and streamlines compliance reporting without interrupting production lines or invalidating validation status.
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Overview
See every asset and data stream, from bioreactors to batch control systems
Attackers are actively targeting pharmaceutical companies to compromise critical supply chains and steal high-value drug formulas and proprietary IP. From GMP-qualified PLCs and batch control systems to cold-chain sensors and lab instruments, life sciences organizations face escalating threats to continuous operational availability and data integrity.
ExtraHop provides agentless security monitoring across these industrial systems without interrupting production or requiring software agents on validated equipment. Unified visibility across pharmaceutical IT, lab networks, and OT helps detect and stop attacks before sensitive data is exfiltrated and production is disrupted.
Brief
Securing the Pharmaceutical Pipeline and Safeguarding R&D Innovation
Learn how ExtraHop defends critical industrial control systems and pharma research processes against the latest attacks.
Challenges
From lab R&D to the cleanroom floor, unmonitored traffic endangers pharma IP and production integrity
Pharmaceutical manufacturing environments face operational and intellectual property risks from targeted attacks while also being required to conform to GMP guidelines. Connected industrial control systems and lab instruments expand the network attack surface. Organizations must deploy internal network monitoring to detect threats inside the environment before compromised assets endanger batch formulas or supply chain operations.
01
Ransomware, IP theft, and production risk
Attackers continue to target pharmaceutical networks to exfiltrate proprietary drug formulas and clinical trial data using encrypted channels, while deploying ransomware to encrypt critical production infrastructure.
02
Visibility challenges across unmanaged OT & lab devices
Plant-floor PLCs, SCADA units, batch controllers, cold-chain sensors, and lab instrumentation cannot support traditional EDR agents due to device stability concerns and costly FDA GxP re-qualification constraints.
03
Hidden connectivity in supposedly air-gapped networks
Third-party vendor connections, maintenance laptops, and supply chain integrations connect GxP-qualified manufacturing plants to external networks leaving them vulnerable to attacks.
04
Encrypted east-west traffic hides dwell time
Lateral threat movements between workstations, research databases, and drug manufacturing networks leverage encrypted east-west traffic channels (including TLS 1.3, Kerberos, and SMBv3) to hide dwell time and bypass traditional perimeter security.
05
Regulatory rigor & GxP compliance mandates
Compliance frameworks including 21 CFR Part 11, FDA QSR, EU GMP Annex 11, and CIRCIA mandate continuous internal network monitoring, strict access logging, and unalterable audit evidence of data integrity.
06
The unmanaged supply chain ecosystem
Third-party vendor connections, maintenance laptops, serial-to-IP converters, and legacy software supply chains create unmanaged network access points, allowing threat actors to pivot laterally toward proprietary pharmaceutical IP and manufacturing controls.
Opportunities
Cybersecurity is becoming a GMP requirement, not just an IT one
The pending EU GMP Annex 11 revision treats cybersecurity as a core GMP obligation alongside audit trails, access management, and supplier oversight. Validated production lines resist conventional security tools because installing an agent on GMP-qualified equipment triggers costly re-qualification cycles.
RevealX operates completely out-of-band by passively observing wire data via a TAP or SPAN port. RevealX guarantees zero operational risk to sensitive manufacturing processes, maintains system validation status, avoids latency, and aligns with the FDA's Computer Software Assurance framework to deliver continuous operational visibility.
GxP mandate for life sciences manufacturing
ExtraHop RevealX provides passive, out-of-band wire-data analysis that inspects industrial network traffic without endpoint agents.
This approach avoids re-validation requirements under FDA GxP guidelines while ensuring continuous validation that batch records and data logs remain unmanipulated across automated batch control and manufacturing lines.
FDA QSR & data integrity compliance
ExtraHop RevealX delivers automated, unalterable transaction logs and real-time threat detection across plant-floor OT and lab networks, ensuring compliance with FDA Quality System Regulations (QSR) and 21 CFR Part 11 requirements.
CIRCIA preparedness for manufacturing infrastructure
ExtraHop RevealX helps critical manufacturing operators meet CIRCIA's mandatory incident reporting guidelines. These rules require reporting within 72 hours of a covered cyber incident and within 24 hours of a ransom payment through continuous monitoring and decision-grade telemetry.
Network context for agentic pharmaceutical operations
One real-time context layer for GxP compliance, drug IP protection, and manufacturing resilience
Compliance evidence, manufacturing uptime, and drug IP protection rely on unified network data. RevealX addresses all three needs using one out-of-band sensor and one structured context layer. Compliance teams receive audit-ready logs for 21 CFR Part 11 and FDA QSR, plant engineering gains root-cause visibility across unmanaged OT devices and PLCs, and SOC teams obtain threat detections backed by forensic proof. Automation and AI agents leverage this context layer to enable machine-speed triage based on live network reality.
Solutions
ExtraHop RevealX platform
ExtraHop RevealX delivers line-rate network intelligence and SSL/TLS 1.3 decryption up to 400 Gbps to protect pharmaceutical intellectual property, secure drug manufacturing pipelines, and maintain operational resilience.
SECURITY
Network Detection and Response (NDR)
Use the power of network visibility, cloud-scale machine learning, and advanced analytics for real-time detection, rapid investigation, and quick, confident response to threats.
NDR overviewIdentify lateral movement, credential abuse, and early-stage ransomware targeting drug research databases and manufacturing workloads mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
Detect unknown threats using cloud-scale machine learning and behavioral baselining across encrypted east-west traffic.
Spot unauthorized commands on GMP-validated equipment before they alter batch formulas or disrupt production lines.
Automatically discover and classify unmanaged plant-floor PLCs, lab instruments, and cold-chain sensors without installing agents.
Decode 90+ IT, OT, and specialized protocols with application-layer fluency at line rates up to 400 Gbps.
Map dependencies between IT, R&D, and manufacturing networks to eliminate single points of failure and validate air-gap boundaries.
Automatically generate packet-level evidence for 21 CFR Part 11, FDA QSR, EU GMP Annex 11, and CIRCIA compliance audits, reducing manual evidence-gathering time by up to 80%.
Accelerate root-cause analysis with streamlined investigation workflows and validate segmentation boundaries between manufacturing plants, public subnets, and high-value pharma IP zones.
PERFORMANCE
Network Performance Monitoring (NPM)
Gain comprehensive insights for smarter troubleshooting and faster resolution of network and industrial application performance issues.
NPM overviewPinpoint latency and throughput issues across lab systems, R&D databases, and manufacturing execution systems (MES) with high-fidelity telemetry.
Accelerate root-cause analysis with a 3-click workflow down to packet inspection.
Unify operational visibility across IT, SecOps, and plant OT teams.
Sustain production uptime during incident response by bridging SOC and NOC workflows with a single source of truth.
Monitor GMP-validated line performance and batch telemetry without deploying software that risks re-validation.
Validate cloud and infrastructure migrations by mapping dependencies against established network baselines.
Ensure high performance across laboratory data pipelines and manufacturing control systems.
Combine long-term metadata with scalable PCAP for an unalterable forensic record of OT transactions.
Automate compliance evidence generation for GxP data integrity checks and NIS2 risk management reports.
