If you're responsible for industrial operations, security, or enterprise risk, the ServiceNow–Armis acquisition probably brought about some curiosity. Not because the deal itself was shocking, but because it brings into focus a conversation many organizations have been carefully postponing.
OT security has moved firmly into the center of enterprise operations, and that shift fundamentally changes what it means to be prepared. This deal doesn't demand you purchase new tools tomorrow, but it should encourage an honest assessment of how your organization operates today and whether your current approach can sustain what's coming.
Here's where to focus your attention.
Most industrial organizations already have more visibility than they realize. They're running scans, discovering assets, and collecting data across their environments. Yet when something goes wrong, the same fundamental questions keep surfacing:
And perhaps most important:
Discovery without context just creates noise. The real promise of integrating Armis into ServiceNow extends toward the ability to place assets inside an operating model in which ownership and decision paths are clearly defined and consistently followed.
If your teams cannot confidently answer “who owns what,” adding more visibility will only expose that organizational gap. Before you can act on what you see, you need to establish who's responsible for acting and what framework guides those actions.
The CMDB conversation makes people uncomfortable, and with good reason. Because examining it closely tends to reveal organizational truths that have been easier to ignore than solve.
In industrial environments, the CMDB often reflects organizational intent rather than operational reality. Assets exist in the field but are not reflected in the system. Ownership information lives in tribal knowledge rather than documented records. Reconciliation between systems happens manually, if it happens at all.
The ServiceNow–Armis combination places new pressure on this foundation, and that pressure creates opportunity rather than threat. This is the right moment to ask substantive questions about what you need:
You don't need perfection in your CMDB (though you should always strive for it). You just need enough trust in the data that people will use it to make decisions under pressure. That's a meaningfully different standard, and understanding the difference helps you focus improvement efforts where they'll have real impact.
One of the quieter but more significant shifts happening in industrial organizations centers on decision authority. Security teams can no longer simply flag a risk and consider their job done. Operations teams can no longer dismiss security concerns without accepting real consequences. OT security decisions now exist at the intersection of safety requirements, uptime expectations, regulatory exposure, financial risk, and organizational reputation.
This convergence means someone has to own the actual decision, not just the alert that triggered it. Before you invest energy worrying about which tools to deploy, take stock of your governance structure and decision-making processes.
When your team identifies a critical OT vulnerability, who has the authority to decide what happens next? What data do they rely on to make that call? How quickly can that decision move through your organization without creating unnecessary escalation or chaos?
The organizations that will benefit most from this acquisition trend are the ones that already understand how decisions move through their structure, even if the underlying data supporting those decisions still needs improvement. You can fix data quality problems incrementally. Fixing unclear decision authority under pressure is considerably harder.
There's a persistent misconception that OT security represents a security challenge. In practice, OT security is an operational reality that happens to have security dimensions. As OT data becomes native to ServiceNow workflows, security outcomes will increasingly depend on operational disciplines: change management processes, asset lifecycle practices, clear service ownership structures, and genuine cross-functional accountability.
This is precisely where many programs encounter obstacles. Not because the technology fails to perform, but because the organization hasn't built the operational capacity to use it effectively. The tools work fine. The workflows, ownership models, and shared accountability structures may not exist yet.
Treat this moment as a forcing function for organizational alignment. Bring your operations, IT, and security teams together around shared outcomes rather than separate mandates. Define concretely what "good" looks like for industrial governance in your specific context. Decide thoughtfully where automation genuinely helps and where human judgment remains essential.
Let’s be clear (and calm): The ServiceNow–Armis acquisition doesn't create an immediate crisis, nor does it require a rapid response. But it does highlight the need for organizational readiness. Industrial organizations that use this moment to clarify ownership boundaries, strengthen governance structures, and streamline decision-making processes will find themselves well-positioned as OT security becomes inseparable from enterprise risk management.
Organizations that skip this foundational work will still gain visibility into their environments. What they may lack is the operational capacity to act decisively on that visibility when circumstances demand it. Having the organizational structure to respond helps effectively solve it.
At CoreX, we focus on helping teams bridge this gap: transforming discovery into trust, and trust into operational decisions that can scale across complex industrial environments. If you're wondering whether your current organizational model is ready for what's emerging, that instinct is worth following, because it usually means you're asking the right questions.