Let’s face it, the line between IT and OT is getting blurrier by the day. Factories, plants, and warehouses are becoming increasingly intelligent, more connected, and more reliant on technology than ever before.
That’s great for visibility, automation, and control. But it’s also how we end up with a well-meaning IT engineer running a vulnerability scan that accidentally knocks a PLC offline.
Oops.
If you’ve ever heard someone say, “Well, let’s just treat the plant network like the corporate network,” that’s your cue to hit pause. Because OT isn’t IT, and pretending it can cause a world of pain.
At Surya Technologies, we live at the crossroads of both worlds. We believe that automation and intelligence are the future for a resurgence in US Manufacturing. Through our partnerships with Claroty and our technology ecosystem, which includes ServiceNow, Datadog, and various network technologies, we help companies integrate IT security and ITSM disciplines into OT environments without disrupting production.
Here’s the real talk on what makes OT so different and why your strategy has to play by a different set of rules.
In IT, if something breaks, you file a ticket. In OT, if something breaks, production comes to a halt. That’s not just inconvenient, it’s costly. Every minute a line is down, you’re losing revenue, output, and sometimes, your sanity.
That’s why uptime and safety take precedence over everything else. You can’t just reboot a PLC in the middle of a batch run. So before anyone rolls out a new policy, patch, or shiny tool, the first question should be:
“Will this keep the line running?”
If not, it’s not security, it’s a shutdown waiting to happen.
IT loves a refresh. New laptops every few years, constant patch cycles, shiny SaaS dashboards. OT? Not so much.
You’ll find PLCs that have been doing their job faithfully since the early 2000s or before, and they’re not interested in your quarterly patch schedule. Some of these systems don’t even have modern update paths.
So, instead of “patch everything all the time,” OT security focuses on segmentation, monitoring, strict access control, and compensating controls that keep things safe without touching fragile systems. Instead of patching a device, can we segment it or create a firewall rule to isolate the issue?
Corporate networks are designed for large, high-volume data transfers. OT networks? They like quiet.
They’re designed for deterministic, time-sensitive traffic. Flood them with vulnerability scans or active probes, and you might trigger faults, drop messages, or worse, cause the process to stop entirely.
So, forget the “scan everything” mindset. In OT, passive monitoring is your friend. You watch quietly, learn the patterns, and never interrupt the rhythm of the line.
In the office, IT is the driving force behind operations. In the plant, it’s all about teamwork.
Plant Operators are familiar with every quirk and heartbeat of their systems. They’ve tuned them for performance, not for a weekly change management meeting.
If IT tries to roll out a security control without involving operations, sparks fly, and not the good kind.
The best security happens when IT and OT sit at the same table, speak the same language, and build a plan that keeps everyone productive and safe. Do your teams know how to communicate effectively with both internal and external teams?
In IT, a security incident might mean a data leak or a few hours of downtime. In OT, it could mean product loss, environmental damage, or safety hazards.
That’s why OT risk management has a different lens; it’s not just about cyber threats, but also about operational impact. Every security decision has to balance uptime, safety, and resilience.
Good OT security doesn’t get in the way. It supports the mission: keeping things running smoothly.
That means:
See. Watching networks quietly, not scanning them aggressively
Segment. Segmenting zones to contain risk
Secure. Making changes only during maintenance windows
Sustain. Working together with the operations teams in IT, OT and plant managers.
Here’s the truth: bridging IT and OT takes a special kind of expertise. You need people who can speak both languages, cybersecurity and controls engineering, and understand how to bring them together without causing chaos. You need a partner that can provide the local expertise OT requires, but leverage global capabilities.
Through our partnership with Claroty, we deliver visibility, passive monitoring, and risk management designed specifically for industrial environments.
We don’t just understand industrial networks, we thrive across the entire technology ecosystem. From ServiceNow and ITSM workflows to Datadog observability, DevOps pipelines, modern networking, and secure cloud integrations, our team helps you unify your enterprise stack with your operational environment.
Through our partnership with Claroty, we deliver visibility, passive monitoring, and risk management explicitly designed for OT industrial environments.
Together, we help you leverage both worlds — the structure of IT and the resilience of OT — to build a smarter, safer, and more connected operation.
Treating OT like IT is one of the fastest ways to erode trust in systems or cause issues. Treating OT with respect, on the other hand, builds stability, safety, and success.
So the next time someone says, “It’s just another network,” you’ll know better.
Because in OT, security that works is security that understands.