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Operational Technology (OT)

Operational technology (OT) refers to the systems and software used to manage industrial operations, including PLCs, SCADA, DCS, and building management systems. These environments carry distinct cybersecurity risks that differ significantly from traditional IT infrastructure.

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About this video

Operational technology refers to the systems and software used to support and manage industrial operations — the core technology behind how companies physically create and deliver products and services. Unlike general IT infrastructure, OT is most commonly found on factory floors and in industrial environments, where it controls physical equipment and processes. Familiar examples include programmable logic controllers (PLCs), SCADA systems, distributed control systems (DCS), remote terminal units (RTUs), CNC machines, and building management systems. While the Internet of Things (IoT) involves networking everyday devices, OT operates in a more specialized industrial context, sometimes referred to as Industrial IoT or IIoT. SCADA systems are one type of industrial control system (ICS), and ICS as a category represents what OT environments are built around. OT environments carry a distinct and serious set of cybersecurity vulnerabilities that stem largely from their age and the conditions under which they were originally deployed. These systems are expensive to install and replace, which means many organizations continue running outdated equipment long after vendor support and patching have ended. They were often built and configured before modern network segmentation practices became standard, leaving them exposed within broader enterprise networks. Authentication and access controls are frequently insufficient or absent, and many devices rely on older communication protocols that were never designed with security in mind. The security gaps in OT environments compound one another. Limited visibility makes it difficult to monitor these systems for threats, and the lack of access controls increases exposure to insider threats. When OT systems are integrated with standard IT networks, a compromise in the OT environment can cascade across the broader infrastructure. Physical security is another concern, as equipment on open factory floors may be accessible to a wide range of personnel. Supply chain risk adds a further layer of complexity, since components sourced from vendors with weak security practices can introduce vulnerabilities before a system is even deployed.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Operational Technology (OT)

Key terms

Operational Technology
OT
Operational Technology refers to hardware and software systems that monitor and control physical devices, processes, and infrastructure in industrial and critical environments, requiring specialized security approaches distinct from traditional IT.
Internet of Things
IoT
A network of physical devices embedded with sensors and software that connect and exchange data over the internet.
Industrial Control System
ICS
Industrial Control System is a broad category of control systems used in industrial production and critical infrastructure, including SCADA systems and PLCs; ICS security focuses on protecting physical processes from cyber threats with minimal downtime tolerance.
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
SCADA
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition is a system architecture used in critical infrastructure to collect sensor data and issue real-time control commands; SCADA security failures can result in physical damage to industrial equipment and facilities.
Network Segmentation
The practice of dividing a network into smaller segments to improve performance and limit the spread of security threats.
Access Control
A security mechanism that restricts access to resources based on policies, roles, or identity.
Vulnerability
A weakness in a system, application, or process that can be exploited by a threat actor.
Legacy System
An outdated computing system, hardware, or software that remains in use despite lacking current vendor support or security patches, often introducing security vulnerabilities.

Topics

Operational Technology Scada Ics Security Industrial Control Systems Ot Security Legacy Systems

Transcript

One of the things that we might find ourselves supporting is operational technologies. But what are operational technologies?

Business operations first

Before we approach operational technology, let us first learn a little more about operations and what operations are as it relates to business. Business operations are those core activities a company uses to create and deliver products and services.

Think about it as if you had a company with lots of departments. Maybe you have the accounting department, maybe you have the sales department, the marketing department, and one of those departments is operations. What would operations do? They would be the ones creating and delivering those products and services.

What operational technology is

Let us address operational technology, then. This is the technology that helps support operations. It is the core technology used to create and deliver a company's products and services. All we have done is substitute technology into this definition here, so it is the technology used to support operations.

But a lot of times we use this term operational technology when it comes to things like factory floors, where you are creating some sort of physical product and you are using equipment and using technology to build that product.

To get a little more specific with this, operational technologies are the systems and software used to support and manage industrial operations. Here are some examples that would fall under operational technology:

  • PLCs, or programmable logical controllers
  • SCADA
  • DCS
  • RTUs
  • CNC machines
  • BMS, or building management systems
  • lighting controls

How this relates to IoT

Most consider the internet of things, or IoT, to be a little different than operational technology. So let us shortly discuss this concept of internet of things, where we are taking appliances and things that normally in the past would not have been networked, and now we are networking them. We are kind of doing the same thing with operational technology, but we are doing it more in an industrial setting, so that is a little bit different here. In fact, there is this term IoT which is industrial IoT, or industrial internet of things, and that is kind of what we are talking about when we are talking about operational technology.

OT, ICS and SCADA

We are going to talk about a few other terms as well. Not only do we have operational technology, but we have industrial control systems, ICS, and SCADA. Essentially a SCADA is a type of industrial control system, and industrial control systems are what operational technologies are.

Common vulnerabilities

There are a lot of common vulnerabilities that are associated with operational technology.

One is legacy and outdated systems. What this means is that when somebody rolls this out, it is very expensive to roll these things out, and if they are not properly managed, they get outdated. Not only that, but sometimes it is too expensive to replace all of these units, so they just keep these things running for a long time. They get outdated and there are no longer patches for them, and so they create vulnerabilities on our networks.

Many times these also were constructed at a time when we did not do a lot of segmentation, so commonly there is a lack of segmentation on the networks and on the things that are managing our operational technology, because this is older technology.

A lot of times people do not put the effort or time into creating sufficient authentication and access control, so a lot of these devices are open and unprotected. And since they are also older, a lot of times they are using older, outdated, insecure communication protocols.

With this outdated equipment, a lot of times we have limited visibility into what is happening on them and are not really able to monitor them very well from a security perspective.

Because of all the things that we have mentioned, it also is vulnerable to insider threats, because we do not have proper access control, proper visibility, proper communication protocols. So insider threats can leverage this to cause some problems.

If they are integrated into the rest of our IT network, then that opens up the rest of our network to vulnerabilities as well, because a compromise of one of these systems can compromise the rest of our system.

Also, much of this stuff can be purchased from less than credible supply chain vendors. If we are looking at vendors and purchasing from vendors, are they implementing secure protocols? Are they implementing secure ways of managing their products?

And a lot of times these are on factory floors, so there is a lack of physical security and they are just open, where anybody has access to them - once again making them vulnerable to insider threats.

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