OT and Industrial Network Security
Production networks were built to run machines, not to resist attackers. Most were installed flat, with default credentials and no separation from the business network. That worked when they were isolated. Almost none of them are isolated anymore.
What we do
Security that does not stop the line
OT is not IT. Patch windows are rare, uptime is the priority, and equipment often outlives the vendor that made it. Security has to work within those constraints.
Network Segmentation
Separating production from the business network so a compromised office workstation cannot reach a PLC or an HMI. The single most effective control available in an OT environment.
Asset Visibility
You cannot protect equipment nobody has inventoried. We identify what is actually on the production network, including the devices that were added years ago and never documented.
Secure Remote Access
Vendors need access to their equipment. Replacing shared credentials and always-on remote tools with brokered, logged, time-limited access that you control and can revoke.
Legacy System Protection
Equipment running unsupported operating systems that cannot be patched or replaced without a capital project. We isolate and wrap them in compensating controls instead of pretending the problem does not exist.
Monitoring
Passive monitoring that watches industrial protocol traffic without injecting anything onto the production network. Visibility without risk to the process.
Standards Alignment
Practical alignment with IEC 62443 and the CISA guidance, scoped to what a mid-sized operation can realistically implement and maintain.
How an OT engagement runs
Nothing touches the production network until we understand it. Passive first, always.
Passive Discovery
We map the production network without active scanning. Active scans have knocked industrial equipment offline before, and we will not take that risk on a live line.
Risk Review
Findings ranked by operational impact, not just technical severity. A vulnerability on a machine that would halt production is a different problem from the same vulnerability elsewhere.
Segment and Harden
Changes staged around planned maintenance windows, with rollback ready at every step.
Is your production network actually separated?
Most owners believe theirs is. An assessment establishes what is really true, without touching the line.
FAQ
OT security questions we get asked
No. Discovery is passive, meaning we observe traffic rather than probing devices. Active scanning has crashed industrial equipment in documented incidents, and we do not do it on live production networks. Any change that carries operational risk is scheduled into a maintenance window with you.
It is worth verifying rather than assuming. True air gaps are rare in practice and tend to erode: a vendor laptop, a remote support tool, a shared jump box, a USB drive, or a single switch uplink someone added for convenience. Most operations that believe they are isolated turn out to have at least one path in.
No, it makes patching the wrong primary control. Unpatchable equipment is normal in OT. The answer is compensating controls: segmenting it so it is unreachable from anywhere an attacker can get to, restricting what it can talk to, and monitoring what it does.
Manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, and distribution, which is what the Chicagoland corridor is full of. The common pattern is a mix of modern and decades-old equipment sharing a network that was never designed with security in mind.
Insurers have started asking specifically about OT segmentation for manufacturing and logistics operations, and the questions are getting more detailed. Being able to document that production is separated from the business network increasingly affects both whether you are covered and what you pay.
