At many organizations, CISOs are now in charge of OT cybersecurity. This change is relatively recent, so many IT teams haven’t seen the unique devices and communication protocols typically used in OT environments. IT security policies also generally didn’t have to consider the operational priorities of personnel safety and production reliability. But now, as IT and OT security teams are combined, they must collaborate to meet security requirements across IT and OT systems.

Implementing firewalls, network segmentation with switches, and basic access controls and logging are common techniques used to secure IT and OT. But OT environments include a new realm of security challenges, potential solutions, and vendors that may be new to IT teams. Because OT security is relatively new, many of the vendors in this environment are new as well. In a rush to meet new OT security demands, a number of new, specialized products have appeared, along with an increase in the number of vendors that teams need to assess, implement, and manage.