Week 5: Create And Track Leading Indicators

Warning: This is the most difficult task in this book for most people. OT cyber incidents and their consequences are lagging indicators. The bad event that caused the impact has already happened. While it is important to capture and present the information you...
First Nozomi, Now Armis

First Nozomi, Now Armis

2025 saw two of the four top tier OT detection + asset inventory vendors get acquired. First Mitsubishi Electronics acquired Nozomi Networks at a valuation of $950M (read my analysis of the Nozomi acquisition). Then last month ServiceNow announced they will be...
25 Years, 3 Lessons

25 Years, 3 Lessons

I’m finishing my 25th year focused on OT security (called SCADA security when I started, then ICS security, and now OT security). So many failures, successes, changed analysis, and lessons learned over that time. Here are 3 lessons that I wish hadn’t taken...

Week 3: Develop An OT Cyber Asset Inventory Plan

Creating an OT cyber asset inventory is not a one week task, and it may not be the right thing for you to do at this time. This week’s task is to determine what OT cyber asset inventory you are committed to achieving and maintaining over the next year, and, at a high...

Week 2 : Evaluate OT Cyber Asset Inventory

Many OT security standards and guideline documents have creating an OT cyber asset inventory as one of the first tasks that should be tackled; one of the key critical controls. As you can tell from this book, I disagree with this. An OT cyber asset inventory is not a...

Week 51: OT Security Patching Audit

As we come to the year’s end, it’s a good time to perform a first audit of the OT Security Patching Program you put in place in Weeks 36 – 37. If you have other OT cyber maintenance activities defined, audit these too. Is the team doing what they committed to do? A...
Premature Consensus In OT Security Made Worse With AI

Premature Consensus In OT Security Made Worse With AI

We know very little about what security controls and consequence reduction actions reduce the number and impact of incidents that includes an OT cyber component. Read that again. We have hypotheses. I have hypotheses, and wrote a book on the topic A Year In OT...