The most dangerous OT insider events won’t trip alerts because nothing looks “malicious.”

In many incidents, the user is legitimate:
Operators, contractors, engineers.
Credentials are valid.
Commands are allowed.

The risk is in small deviations that create big safety and uptime impact.

Instead of hunting for “bad actors,” define safe normal per role and process, then alert on drift.

What to baseline in OT:
– Time: out-of-shift changes, weekend maintenance that wasn’t scheduled
– Place: new asset touchpoints (a contractor suddenly interacting with SIS-adjacent systems)
– Sequence: unusual command chains (mode changes followed by setpoint edits, repeated downloads, rapid start/stop loops)
– Pace: bursts of commands, retry storms, “workarounds” that bypass standard steps

What this enables:
– Detection of insider risk without relying on signatures
– Fewer false positives because “normal” is defined by your plant’s reality
– Earlier intervention before a deviation becomes a safety or downtime event

If your OT monitoring mostly looks for known indicators of compromise, you are missing the events that look like routine work.

Question for OT security and operations leaders: do you have role-based behavioral baselines, or are you still alerting on isolated events?

Contrarian take: If your maritime OT strategy starts with patch cadence and endpoint agents, you’re already behind.

Ships, offshore platforms, and port equipment don’t behave like always-on plants.
They run with:
– Long offline windows between port calls and stable links
– Satellite bandwidth constraints and high latency
– Third-party vendor access across multiple owners and charterers
– Safety-critical systems where “just patch it” is not a plan

That combination creates invisible exposure: configuration drift, unverified vendor actions, and monitoring gaps that only surface after the vessel reconnects.

What to design for instead:
1) Disconnected-by-default controls
Local logging, local detection, local time sync, and store-and-forward telemetry
2) Vendor trust boundaries
Brokered access, least privilege by task, session recording, and break-glass workflows
3) Provable state while offline
Baselines, signed change packages, asset identity, and tamper-evident logs
4) Risk-based maintenance windows
Patch only when it’s safe, testable, and operationally feasible; compensate with segmentation and allowlisting

Maritime OT security is less about perfect visibility and more about maintaining safety and assurance when connectivity disappears.

If you’re building a maritime OT program, start with: What must still be true when the vessel is offline?

Most insider detection fails because it hunts intent.
OT needs to hunt anomalies that predict impact.

In industrial environments, “insiders” are often trusted technicians, engineers, and contractors.
Their actions look legitimate until one small change turns into:
– an unsafe state
– a quality excursion
– unplanned downtime

That’s why the winning question isn’t “who is malicious?”
It’s: “What behavior would cause an unsafe state if repeated at scale?”

Behavioral baselines help you answer that without relying on malware signatures or perfect asset inventories.
You’re not trying to label a person.
You’re watching for deviations in:
– what changed
– when it changed
– from where it changed
– how often it changed
– which systems are being touched outside normal patterns

Examples of high-signal OT deviations:
– new engineering workstation talking to a controller it never touched before
– a contractor account executing the same write operation across multiple PLCs
– after-hours logic changes followed by disabled alarms or altered setpoints
– a burst of “normal” commands at an abnormal rate

Outcome: earlier detection, fewer escalations, and interventions before production feels it.

If you could baseline one behavior in your OT environment to reduce risk fast, what would it be?

Contrarian take: if your OT security assumes stable connectivity and on-site admins, it’s not a security program, it’s a lab demo.

Maritime OT lives in the worst possible assumptions:
– Intermittent satellite links and high latency
– Tiny patch windows tied to port calls and class rules
– Vendors doing remote support through shifting handoffs (ship crew, management company, OEM, integrator)
– Physical exposure: shared spaces, swapped laptops, removable media, and “temporary” networks that become permanent

That combination creates remote-by-default attack paths:
A single weak credential, a poorly controlled remote session, or an untracked engineering workstation can outlive the voyage.

A sea-ready baseline looks different:
1) Design for comms failure: local logging, local detection, and store-and-forward telemetry
2) Treat remote access as a product: per-vendor isolation, just-in-time access, recorded sessions, and strong device identity
3) Patch like aviation: plan by voyage/port cycle, pre-stage updates, verify by checksum, and prove rollback
4) Control the engineering toolchain: signed configs, golden images, USB governance, and offline recovery media
5) Clarify accountability at handoff points: who owns credentials, approvals, and emergency access when the link drops

If you build for the ship, you’ll usually harden every remote industrial site.

What’s the biggest OT security failure mode you’ve seen offshore: connectivity, patching, third-party access, or physical exposure?

Contrarian take: choosing the “most secure” wireless standard won’t save you.

Most breaches aren’t about the radio name. They’re about weak identity, mismanaged keys, and poor segmentation across device, network, and cloud.

If you’re deploying LoRaWAN, LTE/NB‑IoT, Zigbee, Wi‑Fi, or BLE in oil & gas, a faster way to make decisions is to map:
1) Typical attack paths per wireless option
2) Minimum viable controls per layer

Control map by layer (works across all of the above):

Device layer
– Unique device identity (no shared credentials)
– Secure boot + signed firmware; locked debug ports
– Key storage in secure element/TPM where possible
– OTA updates with rollback and provenance

Radio / link layer
– Strong join/onboarding; ban default keys and weak pairing modes
– Replay protection and message integrity enabled
– Rotate keys; define key ownership (vendor vs operator) and lifecycle

Network layer
– Segment OT/IoT from enterprise and from each other (zone/asset based)
– Private APN/VPN for cellular; gateways isolated and hardened
– Least-privilege routing; deny-by-default; egress controls

Cloud / platform layer
– Per-device authN/authZ; short-lived tokens; mutual TLS where feasible
– Secrets management, KMS/HSM, and audit logging
– Tight IAM, data minimization, and secure API gateways

Operations
– Asset inventory and certificate/key rotation schedule
– Detection for rogue gateways/devices, unusual join rates, and data exfil
– Incident playbooks that include field swap, rekey, and revocation

Procurement should ask less “Which wireless is most secure?” and more:
Who provisions identity? How are keys rotated/revoked? How is segmentation enforced end-to-end?

If you want, I can share a one-page threat model + control checklist by radio type and layer.

Stop asking “Which EDR is best?” Start asking “Which EDR can survive our maintenance windows, offline updates, and safety requirements without creating new downtime risk?”.

Air-gapped doesn’t mean risk-free. It means different failure modes:
– Limited connectivity
– Strict change control
– Safety-critical uptime

In OT, “agent-based vs agentless” is the wrong first filter. Start with requirements that match plant reality, then evaluate architectures.

A requirements-first checklist for air-gapped ICS EDR:
1) Deployment model: can it be installed, approved, and rolled back within change control?
2) Offline updates: signed packages, deterministic upgrades, no cloud dependency, clear SBOM and versioning.
3) Resource impact: CPU/RAM/disk caps, no surprise scans, predictable scheduling around maintenance windows.
4) Telemetry in an offline world: local buffering, store-and-forward, export via removable media, and clear data formats.
5) Forensics readiness: timeline and process tree visibility, integrity of logs, evidence handling that fits your procedures.
6) Recovery and containment: safe isolation actions, kill/deny options that won’t trip safety systems or stop critical processes.
7) Coverage of OT endpoints: legacy Windows, embedded boxes, HMIs, engineering workstations, plus vendor support lifecycles.
8) Auditability: repeatable reporting, configuration drift detection, and approvals traceability.

If the tool assumes always-on connectivity, frequent updates, or “we’ll tune it later,” it’s not OT-ready.

Select the EDR that fits the plant, not the plant that fits the EDR.

The most dangerous user in OT isn’t an operator. It’s a “trusted” update.

Attackers are increasingly winning through channels we treat as safe by default:
– Vendor tools and remote service utilities
– Signed installers and “legitimate” certificates
– Update servers and file shares
– Integrator and contractor laptops

In many environments, the update path is a blind trust workflow: download, run, deploy.

Flip the assumption. Treat every firmware patch, driver, and vendor package like an untrusted executable until it proves otherwise.

Before the next maintenance window, map your real update path end-to-end:
Supplier portal or media → IT staging → engineering workstation → jump host → OT network → asset

Then add verification gates that make compromise harder to propagate:
1) Provenance checks: verify publisher, signatures, hashes, and source integrity. Capture evidence.
2) Offline validation: scan and detonate updates in a non-production sandbox before OT exposure.
3) Staged rollouts: pilot on a representative test asset, then expand with change control and rollback plans.
4) Allowlist execution: only approved binaries, scripts, and drivers can run on engineering and maintenance systems.
5) Tooling control: isolate vendor utilities, restrict admin rights, and log every update action.

When you control the update chain, a supplier incident becomes a contained event, not a plant-wide outage.

If you had to prove today that your last OT update was authentic and unchanged end-to-end, could you?

If your security strategy starts with “upgrade everything,” you don’t have a strategy—you have a wish.

Most legacy environments can’t be modernized on a timeline that matches threat velocity. The goal is to reduce blast radius quickly without breaking uptime.

Here’s a practical 30-day playbook to isolate risk in “can’t-patch” systems (OT, lab gear, old Windows, embedded devices, vendor-controlled platforms).

Days 1–7: Asset reality check
– Discover what’s actually on the network (including shadow IT)
– Identify crown jewels, unsafe protocols, and any inbound/outbound paths
– Document owners, purpose, and acceptable downtime

Days 8–15: Segmentation that works in the real world
– Create/validate zones: critical, legacy, user, vendor, internet-facing
– Default-deny between zones; allow only required flows
– Block lateral movement paths (SMB/RDP where not needed, east-west traffic)

Days 16–23: Controlled remote access
– Replace “VPN to everything” with least-privilege access
– Use jump hosts/bastions, MFA, per-session approvals, and full session logging
– Time-bound vendor access; restrict to specific assets and ports

Days 24–30: Monitoring and response readiness
– Centralize logs (firewall, auth, jump host, EDR where possible)
– Alert on new services, new outbound destinations, and unusual admin activity
– Test 2–3 incident runbooks: isolate a segment, revoke access, restore from known-good

This doesn’t eliminate the need to modernize. It buys you time and reduces risk while procurement, validation, and downtime windows catch up.

What’s your biggest blocker in legacy environments: visibility, segmentation, vendor access, or monitoring?

The biggest OT risk isn’t an unpatched PLC — it’s the “helpful” IT integration that quietly turns one compromised credential into plant-floor impact.

As factories, energy, and logistics connect OT to IT for visibility and optimization, the real expansion isn’t endpoints. It’s trust.

Common trust links that attackers chain:
– Shared identity (AD/AAD) extended into OT
– Remote access tooling that reaches “just one” HMI
– Shared monitoring/management platforms with high privileges
– File shares, jump servers, historians, and middleware bridging zones
– Vendor accounts and service credentials that never expire

A practical model for leaders:
1) Map every trust crossing between IT and OT (identity, access paths, data flows, admin tools)
2) Minimize trust: least privilege, separate identities, time-bound access, remove standing vendor creds
3) Segment for failure: assume IT gets owned; design OT so it degrades safely, not catastrophically
4) Monitor the crossings: auth events, remote sessions, tool-to-tool API calls, historian traffic
5) Practice response: OT-aware playbooks, isolation steps, and decision rights before an incident

Convergence delivers value. But every integration is also a contract of trust. Make those contracts explicit, measurable, and breakable.

#ITOT #OTSecurity #CyberSecurity #IndustrialCybersecurity #ZeroTrust #IdentitySecurity #NetworkSegmentation #IncidentResponse

Stop asking “Would my team fall for phishing?” Start asking “What if every employee gets a bespoke pretext built from their public footprint — and it’s updated daily?”

AI is shifting initial access from generic blasts to high-conversion targeting:
– Role-specific lures that mirror real workflows (finance, HR, IT, legal)
– Language and tone matching pulled from public posts, bios, podcasts, press
– Business-context hooks based on vendors, tools, hiring, funding, org changes
– Synthetic voice/video for “quick calls” and realistic meeting invites

This means the control plane has to assume messages, calls, and calendar events can be convincingly synthetic.

Practical controls founders and operators can implement now:
1) Move approvals out of inboxes: payments, bank changes, vendor onboarding require in-app workflows and enforced separation of duties.
2) Add a verification lane: a written callback policy using known-good numbers, plus “no exceptions” for urgency.
3) Lock down identity: phishing-resistant MFA (FIDO2/passkeys) for email, VPN, admin, finance systems.
4) Harden email and domains: DMARC enforcement, domain monitoring, strict external sender labeling.
5) Reduce public exhaust: limit org charts, direct emails, tooling details; tighten who can post what.
6) Instrument detection: alert on new inbox rules, OAuth app grants, suspicious calendar invites, and mailbox forwarding.
7) Train for pretexts, not links: scenarios around vendor change requests, recruiter outreach, “CEO needs this now,” and calendar hijacks.

Initial access is becoming a precision sales funnel. Your defenses need the same level of intent.

#cybersecurity #security #AISecurity #socialengineering #phishing #CISO #founders