IT and OT must recognize that the only way forward is together — digital transformation isn’t going anywhere, leaving little choice but for these two sides to coexist
The days of separate IT and OT environments are over. What were once air-gapped industrial networks are now interconnected with enterprise systems, creating hybrid infrastructures where a single issue can ripple across both production lines and business applications.
Post-pandemic, this convergence has only quickened, resulting in disconnected teams and dangerous blind spots that leave critical infrastructure exposed to both cyberattacks and operational failures.
This is a known issue and yet far too many businesses still aren’t upgrading their monitoring to meet the moment. The excuses are familiar: “It’s too complex,” “Our protocols don’t work together,” or “We don’t know where to start.” But complexity and legacy infrastructure are realities to manage, not reasons to avoid action.
The historical and cultural divide
IT/OT separation is a relic of years gone by. Previously, IT teams focused solely on data security, network performance, and keeping threats at bay. Meanwhile, OT teams preoccupied themselves with machine uptime, production efficiency, and safety protocols. Culturally, the division ran deep. IT prioritized flexibility and connectivity, while OT valued stability and isolation, which made sense at a time when industrial systems operated in complete isolation from the wider enterprise.
But that world no longer exists. There are fewer traditional boundaries across today’s modern factory floors and intertwined ecosystems as IoT sensors, edge gateways, and OT devices now routinely communicate alongside standard IT protocols.
Further, cyberattackers are increasingly on the hunt for industrial weaknesses. Why? Because unplanned downtime costs the world’s biggest companies 11% of their annual revenue. Bad actors know OT is less defended, downtime equals disaster, and a payout is therefore more likely. Against this backdrop, the potential cost of IT/OT inaction becomes greater than maintaining the siloed status quo.
Closing the monitoring gap
IT and OT must recognize that the only way forward is together. Digital transformation isn’t going anywhere, leaving little choice but for these two sides to coexist. Evolving in kind requires updates to the way both teams operate.
For starters, IT needs to understand OT and OT needs to understand IT. There’s often a comprehension barrier between the two since industrial protocols communicate in specialized languages that some systems and admins don’t always understand. Solving this requires oversight that natively supports both IT protocols (such as SNMP and WMI) and industrial OT protocols (like Modbus TCP, OPC UA, and MQTT). This eliminates the need for protocol translators while giving both teams visibility into the same infrastructure and dashboards.
Another way forward is building on the floor insight. If we can upgrade monitoring and establish operational baselines for industrial machinery, we can understand when something is going wrong. At a glance, admins can understand network traffic between industrial devices, communication patterns between PLCs and HMIs, and expected data flows across IT/OT boundaries. Alerts then trigger when something is operating outside of established norms.
These kinds of insights are key in both thwarting would-be hackers and unlocking predictive maintenance. Over time, these metrics can help identify when something is struggling to hit previous benchmarks and showing signs of age. This can be a big money saver considering the multi-million dollar pricetag of both machinery costs and production bottomlines.
This is something we saw recently with an aerospace components supplier overseeing CNC machines and robotic assembly systems across their quality control stations. Integrated monitoring flagged abnormal traffic patterns during an evening shift and triggered immediate investigation. The culprit? A PLC that had been incorrectly installed earlier that day. As a result, the incident response team could isolate the affected network segment, restore proper configuration, and prevent what would have been 24 hours of production downtime and quality issues. Win-win-win.
How leaders and admins can step up
The IT/OT issue isn’t a secret to those in monitoring, production, and security. For years, we’ve heard about IT and OT stepping on one another’s toes. The difference now is that leaders have no excuse for ignoring it. Hackers are trying to poke holes in industrial environments and successful breaches equal expensive payouts or downtime.
The good news is that leadership is finally taking notice. Fortinet research shows a dramatic shift with CISO/CSO responsibility for OT tripling since 2022. At the same time, C-suite ownership more than doubled to 95%. This executive buy-in is crucial because cultural change requires champions at the top – people with decision-making sway that can change company attitudes and values. Better yet, early results speak for themselves: organizations with strong OT security leadership report fewer successful intrusions and reduced impact when attacks do occur.
There’s no denying IT/OT convergence is daunting for teams just getting started. After all, modern environments involve multiple distributed locations and hundreds or thousands of sensors, and the culture has been so different for so long. But daunting doesn’t mean impossible, and it’s certainly no excuse for maintaining the status quo. The key to successful IT/OT implementation is to start small: Conduct a thorough asset inventory, prioritize your essential systems, then expand from there. Your monitoring capabilities, security posture, and bottom line will thank you.
