The cybersecurity industry has spent years perfecting how to defend laptops, servers, identities and APIs. Yet some of the most important systems in our lives, the industrial ones that keep society up and running, were never designed for cybersecurity at all. As they connect to modern networks, the stakes rise dramatically.
These are the machines, sensors, weighbridges, centrifuges, conveyor belts, control rooms, utility grids, MRI scanners and industrial internet of things endpoints that power our hospitals, mines, ports, manufacturing plants and national infrastructure.
They’re the systems that have always been silent, because that’s how they were designed. Air-gapped, invisible and untouched. However, operational technology (OT) from yesterday and OT today are very different. The vulnerabilities are different, the threat is different and the exposure is different.
What used to be physically isolated is now digitally intertwined. And once those worlds converge, everything changes.
Cyber-physical is no longer a niche topic
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to realise what could happen in the event of a successful cyberattack against critical infrastructure. We could lose the power grid or our water supply. Traffic lights would stop working and air traffic control could go offline. These are only the tip of a large and very frightening iceberg.
Many people are unaware of just how deeply critical infrastructure touches our daily lives. It’s everywhere. In robots, our ATMs, transportation and logistics. In these areas, the effects cascade quickly: no GPS, no food delivery, no medical systems, no energy.
This is not theoretical or futuristic. It’s happening now.
If it moves or measures, it’s at risk
We’re long past the point where OT can hide behind the excuse of being “logically segregated”. The argument no longer holds: OT is becoming less and less segregated. Everything is converged and moving to the cloud. Unfortunately, this convergence is the exact doorway attackers need.
Whether you’re running a mine, a manufacturing line producing bulletproof vests or a national transportation network, the attack vectors are the same ones we’ve seen over and over in conventional cyber incidents. It’s not a far leap to a manufacturing plant, a mining institution or an infrastructure network. The threat landscape does not discriminate by industry; it simply follows the connectivity.
And once attackers gain access, the consequences aren’t just data loss; they’re physical.
We’ve already seen it:
- The Natanz nuclear facility, where malware “shook the centrifuges so violently it caused an explosion”.
- A Florida water plant attack where the goal was literally to poison people.
- Colonial pipeline grinding an entire country’s logistics to a halt.
- Transnet and multiple Japanese ports brought to a standstill.
- Automotive giants Jaguar and Honda losing hundreds of millions due to OT outages.
These aren’t isolated “IT incidents”. They are operational disruptions with real-world consequences, escalating all the way to national security and loss of life.
Planes, trains and automobiles
Here’s another thought that should make every leader sit up straight: there’s an attack surface on an airplane, car and even on a boat.
Modern aircraft now offer passenger Wi-Fi, satellite connectivity like Starlink and bring-your-own-device entertainment. It’s a convenience for travellers, but a growing challenge for defenders. These connectivity layers effectively extend the aircraft’s digital perimeter, creating new pathways for external actors and new risks that passengers could inadvertently bridge into critical onboard systems.
This is the essence of cyber-physical risk: when attackers can turn off more than servers. They can turn off the plane itself.
Why OT is so hard to secure
Even when organisations want to secure their OT environments, the barriers are significant.
OT and IT are completely different animals:
- You can’t install an antivirus on an MRI scanner.
- You can’t run standard patch management on a 20-year-old weighbridge OS.
- Replacing that outdated OS isn’t a download; it’s US$5 million problem because you have to replace the entire physical environment.
- The pool of OT-skilled professionals is tiny compared to IT.
- OT was historically looked after by engineers, not cybersecurity specialists.
Industrial IoT compounds this further. Devices are being plugged into plants, factories, hospitals and mines at an unprecedented rate, often with no visibility, governance or real security model. We’ve always talked about shadow IT, but OT has its own problem: a host of new machines and sensors that are not always visible to the security department.
Every connection could become a potential gateway.
This affects us all. Our TVs are a gateway, so are our fridges and our cars. The more features we enable, the more we invite risk, often unknowingly.
The geopolitical layer
Cybercrime is no longer the main story. The rise in ideologically and politically motivated attacks is the real red flag.
With escalating geopolitical tensions, activity against industrial infrastructure is no longer simply ransomware or extortion. It is part of a framework for potential ongoing warfare. This is hybrid warfare in action, cyberattacks that precede physical attacks.
Russia did it in Ukraine. Iran did it in maritime operations. Others are following suit. This is why Snode was built the way it was. It was designed from the outset to cover IoT, OT and IT networks through a single, unified platform.
Critically, no one wants to underpin national security with adversarial technology. A sovereign, transparent, fully auditable system built locally (for local resilience) is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s an incontrovertible necessity.
We’ve reached the moment where the digital meets the physical, where cyber risk becomes real-world consequence. Everything that touches our lives now has a digital interface. The question is not whether your silent systems are exposed; it’s whether you know how exposed you really are?
