Topic
7 essays in this series
The relationship between data integration and security is usually framed in one direction. The more consequential relationship runs the other way: data integration determines what can be seen, correlated, and acted on.
Data volume produces the appearance of security awareness while frequently obscuring the understanding that awareness is supposed to provide. The distinction between monitoring and awareness is the difference between having data and understanding what it is telling you.
There is a competency in OT security that rarely appears in job descriptions but separates practitioners who can operate in industrial environments from those who have only studied them.
The gap between documented assets and actual assets in industrial environments is not organizational incompetence — it is a structural feature. And threat actors are not constrained by your asset inventory.
The patch-prioritize-verify cycle of enterprise vulnerability management rests on assumptions that collapse in OT environments. A mature OT vulnerability program looks fundamentally different — and must be built from scratch.
Passive monitoring is the safe choice in OT — and if taken too literally, it is also an incomplete one. The real answer is a tiered interrogation model that reflects actual device risk, not methodology purity.
The assumption that OT security is just IT security in a different building is not only wrong — it is dangerous. Applying IT controls to OT environments does not reduce risk. It introduces a new category of it.