As IT and OT systems converge, cybersecurity leaders face a growing and critical challenge: managing risk across both domains. The Colonial Pipeline attack in 2021 has had a long-term impact. It shows how an IT-targeted ransomware attack could bring an OT environment to a standstill, disrupting essential fuel supplies. This incident, and others like it, underscore that today’s cyber threats extend far beyond data loss—they can halt physical operations, posing significant financial and safety risks.
The expanding attack surface
The expanding attack surface is a key driver of rising cyber risk. As organisations adopt IoT, cloud solutions, AI, and other digital tools, they open new entry points for attackers. The latest Tenable Cloud Risk Report warned of a “toxic cloud trilogy”—a combination of highly privileged, publicly accessible, and critically vulnerable workloads—that create interconnected weak points, providing direct paths for cybercriminals.
This interconnectedness also blurs IT and OT boundaries, enabling attackers to move across domains and trigger a “domino effect” of risks enterprise-wide.
Unique vulnerabilities in OT systems
Securing operational…
