OT Security
The practice of protecting operational technology environments while respecting their constraints: legacy devices, proprietary protocols, strict uptime requirements, and the potential for physical consequences from cyber events.
What is OT Security?
The practice of protecting operational technology environments while respecting their constraints: legacy devices, proprietary protocols, strict uptime requirements, and the potential for physical consequences from cyber events.
Operational Technology (OT) security addresses the unique challenges of protecting industrial systems that control physical processes — manufacturing lines, power grids, water treatment, pipelines, and critical infrastructure. OT environments were historically isolated from IT networks and the internet, making security a lower priority than reliability and uptime. That isolation has eroded rapidly as IT/OT convergence, remote access, and supply chain connectivity have bridged what were once air-gapped networks.
The security posture of most OT environments reflects decades of design choices made under the assumption of isolation. Devices run end-of-life operating systems, protocols with no authentication (Modbus, DNP3, BACnet), and firmware that cannot be patched without vendor certification. These aren't failures of diligence — they're the result of operational environments where a 20-year equipment lifecycle is normal and downtime costs can exceed $100,000 per hour.
Effective OT security works within these constraints. Rather than imposing IT-style endpoint agents or aggressive scanning that can crash PLCs, it relies on passive monitoring, behavioral baselining, and network-layer enforcement. The goal is to detect threats and contain damage without introducing new availability risks.
Key Facts
- Over 90% of OT environments have at least one device running an end-of-life operating system
- ICS-CERT reported a 300% increase in reported OT vulnerabilities between 2018 and 2022
- The average IT/OT segmentation gap allows lateral movement from corporate IT to the OT network in under 3 hops
- Nation-state actors have targeted OT environments in energy, water, and manufacturing in over 20 countries
How ORDR Addresses OT Security
ORDR discovers and monitors every OT asset using passive, agentless techniques that are safe for sensitive industrial environments. It classifies PLCs, RTUs, HMIs, historians, and sensors without sending probes that could destabilize them, establishes behavioral baselines, and generates segmentation policies that separate IT from OT and zone OT assets by function. Threat detections include protocol-level anomalies invisible to traditional security tools.
See ORDR in actionFrequently Asked Questions
Protect your operational technology.
ORDR discovers and monitors every OT asset in real time—even legacy PLCs and SCADA systems that cannot run agents.