Operational Technology & Automation

On a factory floor the constraints stop being abstract. Equipment installed in 1998 still runs, the maintenance window is four hours a quarter, and a failed update does not degrade a service, it stops a line.

This unit works in that environment. Industrial control and SCADA systems, IT and OT convergence done without exposing control networks, industrial IoT and sensing retrofitted onto machines that were never designed to report anything, and robotics and process automation where the payback has to be demonstrable.

OT security is its own discipline. Availability outranks confidentiality, patching windows are scarce, and protocols predate the idea of authentication. Applying enterprise IT security practice unmodified to a plant network is how production gets stopped by the security team rather than by an attacker.

The useful output is usually unglamorous: better visibility of what the equipment is actually doing, fewer unplanned stoppages, and maintenance driven by condition instead of the calendar.

Typical mandates: an industrial IoT or monitoring rollout, an IT and OT convergence programme, OT security assessment and segmentation, a robotics or automation business case, or a control system upgrade on a live site.