For OT Cyber Defenders, Lack of Data Is the Biggest Threat

OT Security 'a Generation Behind Traditional IT' Shaun Waterman • November 7, 2025

For those charged with the cyber defense of operational technology and industrial control systems, one challenge towers above all others: Data. Specifically, its scarcity.

See Also: From Ancient Myths to Modern Threats: Securing the Transition from Legacy to Leading Edge

There's little hard data available about real life cyberattacks against OT and ICS. Most operators simply don't capture it, in stark contrast with their IT counterparts. Corporate victims of an IT attack typically call in a forensic analyst to comb through the logs and telemetry to spot how hackers broke in. Incident responders "run their tools on your systems. They can pull the data up," said Rob Lee CEO of OT cybersecurity leader Dragos.

"In the world of operations, there's only systems and physics."

Data in the OT and ICS world is transient ...