Michael UngarCEO of the Industry 4.0 Club

Cybersecurity Resilience: Protecting Against Modern Threats

9 Dec 2025 · 2 min

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2:03

In this short dialogue, the speakers discuss the core principles of cybersecurity‑by‑design for operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems. They argue that resilience—not convenience for managers—is the primary goal. A central claim is that true air‑gapped systems do not exist; even seemingly isolated networks are vulnerable through USB ports, rogue Wi‑Fi hotspots, contractor‑installed consumer routers, and other forgotten “doors.” The conversation highlights how human factors (e.g., contractors seeking convenience in extreme weather) create inadvertent attack vectors. They stress the importance of process design that physically separates basic control systems from safety‑instrumented systems, each running on dedicated hardware to provide a hard stop. The speakers note that many organizations suffer from poor architecture and inadequate maintenance, leaving them exposed to evolving threats. Overall, the dialogue calls for a shift toward resilient, physically segmented OT designs and continuous reassessment of security posture.

Chapters

So once again, the cybersecurity by design that we're trying to bring forward, not to make it easier from a management standpoint. It's all about resilience all the time.
Yeah, and I mean, I actually 100% agree. So first of all, really happy to hear, you know, that air-gapped systems don't exist because I do think, and a lot of organizations, they think that they're air-gapped, but I completely agree. I mean, You have a USB port open or a whatever open, or someone throws up a hotspot, or I mean, there's so many different things.
It's a changing environment. And maybe every 6 months or so, are you trying to look if somebody, because of some contractor and it's a genuine need, you have an off-the-shelf Best Buy wireless router to make it more convenient? Let's say you're in Canada, it's winter, it's -30 outside, you don't want to be next to the thing and freezing yourself out. So people don't do it out of malicious intent. Sometimes it's just forgotten doors, but it's still a caveat that we need to avoid.
Right. So I mean, again, coming back to that diagram that you had, I mean, that's almost like that process design and process control step where you're just trying to understand and physically connect or, you know, separate yourself before you get into the alarming stages and some of these other things. That's even—
but you can, as you mentioned before, you can even see it as a Another safety layer. So that's why in the previous graph, the basic control system has its own hardware and the safety instrumented system has its own hardware to reach a controlled but hard stop. Same goes for OT. So that's why we prefer to have our own stuff on our side. The thing we're missing out is the lack of maintenance and some poor architecture. And some are doing a great job, but But most of them don't. And it's a scary thing. We really want to keep the light up, but somehow with the advance in the threats that we see, it's going to hit hard.