OT Security Report
the reality of day-to-day OT operations

Production environments tend to run smoothly until they suddenly don't. Today’s industrial operational technology (OT) landscapes are defined by high availability, growing complexity, and rising security demands. The new OT Security Report, developed in cooperation with Statista, reveals that disruptions, security incidents, and operational "blind spots" are common in many OT environments.

This data-driven study provides a snapshot of the current state of OT security and highlights risks that often emerge long before they are recognized as outages or incidents.
 

Five key insights from the report

1. Cyber incidents are no longer a niche issue
   Organizations often underestimate the frequency of OT-related security events. The most important factor is not a single attack type, but rather the variety of incidents and how they are perceived depending on region, role, and operational experience.
    
2. System outages are a regular occurrence
   Downtime, device failures, and communication issues are not isolated exceptions in many environments. Not only is it striking how often these occur, but also how differently their impact is assessed depending on who you ask and where they sit within the organization.
    
3. The biggest risk factor isn’t in the network
   A consistent pattern emerges across all regions: the most common causes of OT disruptions are not sophisticated attack scenarios but rather the interaction between people, processes, and systems. The report takes a closer look at which factors matter most and why they are so difficult to address.
    
4. Visibility remains a critical bottleneck
   Many OT environments lack complete and up-to-date visibility into assets, versions, and system states. These gaps often only become apparent during an incident, resulting in negative consequences for response times, root-cause analysis, and system recovery.
    
5. Automation helps, but not everywhere in the same way
   The report shows a clear correlation between the level of automation in core OT processes and perceived operational stability. At the same time, the report explains why many organizations - intentionally or not - remain in hybrid operating models and the risks those models entail.

Why the full report is worth reading

The report goes beyond raw numbers, providing context by region, company size, role, and maturity level. It reveals where perceptions diverge from operational realities and which factors demonstrably influence stability and security.

Anyone responsible for operating, securing, or evolving OT systems will gain valuable insight into patterns often dismissed in day-to-day work as “isolated cases.” Download the full OT Security Report now to discover what’s really happening behind the apparent stability of industrial OT environments.