What Robin Thicke, Pharrell, and TI got right about your OT network (and no, it’s not lawsuits).
“We have no idea what’s in our network.”
I froze. My mental wheels started spinning.
We sat at a small conference table at an energy utility. The room was awkward. You could literally hear a pin drop. The customer had just admitted the truth most IT teams are too nervous to say out loud: they had no idea what was in their network.
“No idea at all?” I questioned.
“Yeah… we don’t know what’s in those systems, or where they end, or where the enterprise begins.”
We were fusing four vendor products together for the customer into one cohesive view, and they were unaware of what could be hiding in the dataset we were about to show them. Once the dataset was presented, they saw a composite, complete view of their network and assets for the very first time.
It was a massive network. Multi-site, multi-tool, multi-million liability if not handled correctly.
How was it possible they had previously had such limited real-time visibility into their network?
What else could they have missed?
I regain my composure. “Well, this ICS spans 2/3rds of the globe and was designated by Presidential order. So, let’s start by giving you that insight.”
It reminds me of battle school. “You can fight what you can’t see” was our guiding philosophy back then. Now, standing in front of our customers, they could see for the first time exactly where the ICS meets the IT. Where the configurations had been left far too open, and only a few of the rules actually aligned to the business needs. It was a fragmented space. Layered with changes, rules, and logic that were finally laid bare.
Now: it’s a masterpiece. A cybersecurity-Jackson-Pollock. Full of contrast and conflict. Untidy and unruly mess. Chaos and order in the same lens. Unvarnished.
Blurred lines intersecting.
But fully visible, at last.
What about your network? What’s going unnoticed and unseen, flying beneath the radar of blurred lines and murky intel?
What *
What Robin Thicke, Pharrell, and TI got right about your OT network (and no, it’s not lawsuits). 👇
“We have no idea what’s in our network.”
I froze. My mental wheels started spinning.
We sat at a small conference table at an energy utility. The room was awkward. You could literally hear a pin drop. The customer had just admitted the truth most IT teams are too nervous to say out loud: they had no idea what was in their network.
“No idea at all?” I questioned.
“Yeah… we don’t know what’s in those systems, or where they end, or where the enterprise begins.”
We were fusing four vendor products together for the customer into one cohesive view, and they were unaware of what could be hiding in the dataset we were about to show them. Once the dataset was presented, they saw a composite, complete view of their network and assets for the very first time.
It was a massive network. Multi-site, multi-tool, multi-million liability if not handled correctly.
How was it possible they had previously had such limited real-time visibility into their network?
What else could they have missed?
I regain my composure. “Well, this ICS spans 2/3rds of the globe and was designated by Presidential order. So, let’s start by giving you that insight.”
It reminds me of battle school. “You can fight what you can’t see” was our guiding philosophy back then. Now, standing in front of our customers, they could see for the first time exactly where the ICS meets the IT. Where the configurations had been left far too open, and only a few of the rules actually aligned to the business needs. It was a fragmented space. Layered with changes, rules, and logic that were finally laid bare.
Now: it’s a masterpiece. A cybersecurity-Jackson-Pollock. Full of contrast and conflict. Untidy and unruly mess. Chaos and order in the same lens. Unvarnished.
Blurred lines intersecting.
But fully visible, at last.
What about your network? What’s going unnoticed and unseen, flying beneath the radar of blurred lines and murky intel?
What *aren’t* you seeing?
