Organizations are rethinking OT cybersecurity because the traditional **air gap** between IT and OT has largely disappeared. Historically, industrial control systems (ICS) and broader OT environments were **isolated** from IT and the internet. That isolation reduced cyber risk, so security was often not a design priority. Today, that has changed for several reasons:

• Digital transformation in OT: Plants and critical infrastructure now rely on cloud applications, AI, IoT/IIoT, and smart devices to improve efficiency, safety, and real-time decision-making. These tools connect OT to IT and external networks.
• Erosion of the air gap: As OT connects to IT, OT systems are now exposed to the same threats IT has faced for years—plus the added risk of physical impact if industrial processes are disrupted.
• Rising attack activity: Cyberattacks on OT systems have surged by 73% in the last year. Nearly 50% of OT security professionals surveyed reported one or more incidents in the past year, with impacts including brand damage, loss of critical data, and reduced productivity.
• High-consequence targets: OT runs power grids, water systems, manufacturing plants, pipelines, and transportation. A successful attack can affect public safety and economic stability, not just corporate data.
• Workforce and maturity gaps: About 52.6% of the ICS/OT cybersecurity workforce has five years or less experience, and less than half hold OT-specific certifications. Many environments still lack basic security hygiene, segmentation, and monitoring.

As a result, organizations are moving from a mindset of “OT is safely isolated” to one where OT is treated as a connected, cyber-physical environment that needs structured, ongoing protection—similar to IT, but with a stronger focus on **operational continuity and safety**.

Several threat types and patterns are especially relevant to OT environments today:

• Ransomware targeting manufacturing and critical infrastructure:
  • Manufacturing is currently the most targeted sector for ransomware, according to the Fortinet 2025 Threat Landscape Report.
  • Attackers increasingly aim to disrupt operations, not just steal data, because downtime in OT can quickly translate into financial and safety impacts.
• ICS-specific malware:
  • New malware families such as FrostyGoop and PIPEDREAM are designed specifically for ICS.
  • FrostyGoop targets technology used by more than 46,000 internet-enabled ICS devices worldwide.
  • PIPEDREAM is notable as one of the first ICS malware strains built to scale across systems and sectors, making it easier to reuse against different targets.
• Attacks on PLCs and critical utilities:
  • Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) used in water facilities, chemical plants, and manufacturing are frequent targets.
  • Recent incidents tied to geo-political tensions have gone after PLCs in small water districts and other critical services.
• Common attack vectors:
  • Spear phishing and phishing to compromise user endpoints and steal credentials.
  • Compromised endpoints in IT that provide a bridge into OT networks.
  • Stolen or weak credentials that allow lateral movement into sensitive OT segments.
• Structural weaknesses in OT environments:
  • Inadequate segmentation between IT and OT networks, allowing malware such as ransomware and worms to move from IT into OT and spread laterally.
  • Legacy, unpatched devices that cannot easily be taken offline for maintenance, creating long-lived vulnerabilities.
  • Limited monitoring and response: while detection times have improved from days (2019) to hours (2024), 44% of organizations still lack ICS/OT-specific incident response, and fewer than a third have a SOC with ICS/OT-specific reporting.
  • Only 12% of organizations report extensive OT network monitoring, even though monitoring is the top factor in faster incident detection.

Planning for OT security today means assuming that attackers understand industrial systems, have specialized tools, and will exploit weak segmentation, unpatched assets, and human error to reach critical processes.

A platform-based approach is about moving away from isolated point products toward an integrated security architecture that covers both IT and OT. For OT teams, this helps reduce complexity, close gaps between tools, and support consistent policies across the entire environment. Here’s how the Fortinet OT Security Platform supports that approach:

• Integrated security and networking:
  • Core components include FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs), FortiSwitch, and other secure networking and security operations solutions.
  • The platform is built on the FortiOS network operating system, which natively integrates security and networking functions.
• End-to-end visibility across IT, OT, and IIoT:
  • FortiOS can discover and classify assets—users, applications, protocols, and devices—across IT and OT.
  • It assigns risk scores based on security posture, giving teams a clearer view of the attack surface.
  • Visibility can be extended with solutions like FortiSwitch, FortiAP, and FortiExtender.
• Intent-based segmentation and zone protection:
  • Once assets are visible, organizations can create secured network zones and apply intent-based segmentation—grouping assets by role, risk, or process.
  • Policies are enforced per zone and can be dynamically updated as trust levels change, helping protect critical systems while still allowing necessary data flows.
• Automation and coordinated response:
  • The platform uses AI-driven FortiGuard security services to automate threat detection and response.
  • Through the Fortinet Security Fabric, tools share threat intelligence and support centralized correlation, so anomalies can be quickly identified and escalated to the NOC or SOC.
  • Potentially compromised assets can be automatically isolated (walled off) to contain incidents, while still allowing monitoring.
• Support for key OT security use cases: The Fortinet OT Security Platform is designed to address five critical use cases:
  1. Wide area network (WAN) security
  2. Local area network (LAN) security
  3. Advanced threat protection
  4. Security automation, operations, and management
  5. Third-party vendor integrations
• Simplified operations and maturity growth:
  • Management is consolidated into a single pane of glass, helping teams operate with fewer silos.
  • As organizations mature, they can move from basic visibility to segmentation, access control, predictive behavior analysis, and eventually orchestration and automation.
  • Industry data shows progress: organizations reporting established visibility and segmentation increased from 13% (2023) to 26% (2025), and those rolling OT security under a CISO grew from 16% (2022) to 52% (2025).

In practice, this means OT teams can incrementally build toward a more resilient architecture—starting with visibility and segmentation, then layering on automation and advanced analytics—without having to stitch together disconnected point solutions.