OT Risk Assessment: What to Execute in the First 30 Days
The first 30 days should not be treated as a reporting exercise; the real objective is establishing trustworthy OT risk visibility. In week one, validate PLCs, HMIs, historians, engineering workstations, remote access paths, and third-party links in a single inventory. Any unmanaged or ownerless asset must be classified immediately. Without this baseline, security investments are often prioritized incorrectly and miss the highest-impact exposure points.
In the next step, map business impact to production realities. Measure how outages affect specific lines, quality gates, and safety-critical functions. The impact matrix should include not only direct financial loss but also safety implications, environmental exposure, supply delay, and contractual delivery risk. Once technical weakness and operational consequence are connected in one model, leadership decisions become faster and far more defensible.
Then tailor the threat model to field conditions. Credential abuse, weak remote maintenance channels, contractor laptops, uncontrolled east-west traffic, and unpatched legacy components should be scored with a likelihood-impact framework. This creates a practical split between immediate fixes, mid-term architectural improvements, and long-term maturity initiatives. Teams stop reacting to noise and start working from a rational, impact-driven priority order.
By week four, publish a joint execution plan for engineering, OT operations, and management. The plan should define 30/60/90-day actions, owners, measurable KPIs, and validation criteria. Programs that lack measurable outcomes quickly lose momentum. A well-structured first-month roadmap, however, delivers visible quick wins while establishing the governance and technical discipline required for sustained OT cyber resilience.
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