Part 1
Understand exposure
You cannot protect a process you have not mapped: five steps to a useful picture of your estate, and the questions leaders should be able to answer.
Free guide · Industrial cyber security
Operational Resilience in a Hostile World
A practical guide to securing IoT, OT and SCADA. In an industrial environment a cyber incident is measured in pressure, temperature, flow and lost production, and the systems that control physical processes often cannot be patched, scanned or restarted at will. This guide grounds every decision in physical consequence and operational constraint.
- Map your exposure first: processes, access routes and the quiet paths into control networks
- Seven controls in order of return on effort, each with an owner and a way to prove it works
- A first-hour response flow, a recovery-readiness checklist and a measurable 90-day plan
10sources · NIST · ISA/IEC 62443 · NCSC · CISA
90-dayplan included
What's inside
Four parts, from exposure to proof
Each part ends in something you can act on: a question to answer, a control to own, a procedure to rehearse or a measure to report.
Part 2
Apply controls
Seven controls in order of return on effort, each with what to do, who owns it and how to verify it works. Plus four things the guide does not recommend.
Part 3
Respond and recover
Why OT response is different, a first-hour coordination flow, a recovery-readiness checklist and why backups are not recovery.
Part 4
Improve
A measurable 90-day plan to know, control and prove, with owners and deliverables for each phase and five measures that mean something.
Part 2 preview
Seven controls, in order of return on effort
Drawn from NIST SP 800-82r3, the ISA/IEC 62443 zone-and-conduit model, CISA's primary mitigations and the NCSC connectivity principles. The guide gives each control an owner and a way to verify it works.
1
Segment with zones and conduitsAn industrial DMZ between enterprise and operations; zones follow process dependencies, not the org chart.
Gateway2
Controlled, time-limited vendor accessOne brokered entry point, every session approved against a ticket and recorded. Dormant supplier accounts disabled.
Gateway3
Identity at supported gatewaysNamed accounts and phishing-resistant MFA at the gateway and jump hosts, with compensation where HMIs only support shared logins.
Gateway4
Protect engineering workstationsTreat the engineering workstation as the most privileged asset: hardened build, no email or browsing, logic under version control.
Depends5
Risk-based vulnerability managementPrioritise by exposure and consequence; compensating controls where patching must wait. No automatic patching of control hosts.
Depends6
OT-aware monitoring and change detectionPassive monitoring that understands industrial protocols; alert on new devices, conduits, mode changes and logic downloads.
Gateway7
Tested backups of logic and dependenciesController programs, HMI projects, server images, licences and firmware, one copy offline, restoration rehearsed.
DependsGateway controls sit at boundaries and never touch controllers. Depends controls rely on capabilities legacy equipment may lack, so expect compensating measures.
Part 4 preview
Ninety days to know, control and prove
Enough time to establish ownership, close the most exposed paths and demonstrate recovery for the processes that matter most. The first cycle of an ongoing programme, not the point at which an estate becomes "secure".
DAYS 1 TO 30
Know
Establish ownership, map critical processes and remote access, prioritise exposure.
- Named owner for each critical process and its control assets
- Register of every external access route and the vendor behind it
- Consequence-ranked exposure list agreed with operations
DAYS 31 TO 60
Control
Strengthen priority access paths, implement feasible boundary controls, validate recovery material.
- All vendor access through one brokered gateway with MFA and recording
- Unintended internet exposure removed; conduit register published
- Backups located, verified for completeness and stored offline
DAYS 61 TO 90
Prove
Exercise response, test restoration within agreed constraints, establish ongoing assurance.
- Tabletop exercise of the supplier-account scenario with operations in the room
- Timed restoration of one critical controller and HMI on test hardware
- Pre-approved isolation options signed off; quarterly measures to the board
Free download
Get the guide, no form required
Read it, share it with your operations and engineering teams, and use the questions in Part 1 at your next site review. If it raises questions about your own estate, we would welcome a conversation about where to start.
Download the free guide PDF · 5 pages · 319 KB
Who it is for
Written for the people who own the process
Operations and plant directors
Understand what a cyber incident means in pressure, temperature and lost production, and what to ask your teams.
OT and control engineers
Controls that respect fragile equipment, vendor constraints and safety systems, with an owner and a way to verify each one.
CISOs and security leaders
A way to bring enterprise security discipline to industrial environments without importing enterprise IT practice unchanged.
Boards and risk owners
The questions to ask, the measures to expect and a 90-day structure to hold the programme to account.
Keep reading