Industrial Cybersecurity Insider

Manufacturing cybersecurity mistakes that cost millions without a hacker in sight, and the steps that prevent them, in this rewind episode. We pulled one of our earliest conversations out of the archive, and it hits harder now than when we first recorded it. Dino and Craig share stories from the plant floor about mistakes that quietly cost manufacturers millions: A vending machine with a duplicate...

A successful backup is reassuring, but can your team actually restore a critical system when production is on the line? Dino sits down with Hannah Bergin and Jack Mansfield of Macrium Software to explore what recovery looks like in manufacturing environments, from fragile legacy Windows machines to isolated networks and plant systems with different owners. They discuss why backup and recovery shou...

Your plant has monitoring tools. But is anyone watching what they find? Dino Busalachi sits down with Justin Carlson, Chief Strategy Officer at Kasm, to talk about one of the biggest challenges in manufacturing cybersecurity: a shrinking pool of people who understand both the plant floor and security. They explore when managed services make sense, what decisions should always stay with your own te...

Your plant can be running exactly as expected and still have blind spots that put production, process, and people at risk. Dino Busalachi and Kevin Kumpf break down the gaps most leaders never see: new equipment arriving with outdated firmware, vendors making changes nobody tracks, and process data that gets collected but rarely watched. Using refrigeration systems and manufacturing floors as exam...

Most manufacturers have an incident response plan. Few have tested it at 2 AM on a Sunday, with a skeleton crew and the people who know the equipment best nowhere to be found. Fresh from the ICS Cybersecurity Conference in Nashville, Craig Duckworth and Dino Busalachi compare notes on what keeps industrial organizations from being ready for a real attack. The risk today goes beyond ransomware. It'...

You passed the audit. The tools are installed. None of it means your plant is secure. Most industrial cybersecurity plans are written far from the equipment they're meant to protect. The tools are purchased but never fully operationalized. Critical equipment stays unseen. And the plant teams who know it best are the last to see the data. In this compilation episode, Craig Duckworth, Dino Busalachi...

Dino sits down with Matt Pike of Rockwell Automation for an honest conversation about why industrial cybersecurity still stalls out inside so many plants, and it has very little to do with technology. Matt walks through his path from onsite IT support at a large automotive manufacturer into OT security, and explains why modern security principles keep colliding with legacy systems that were built...

Safety starts with a goal. So should cybersecurity. Craig Duckworth sits down with Shankar Somasundaram, CEO of Asimily and former head of Symantec's IoT business, to explain why plant floor cybersecurity is a safety issue, not an IT expense. They cover why industrial cybersecurity programs stall after the tool is purchased, how to start with a goal instead of a solution, and why fixing the bigges...

This highlight episode pulls the sharpest moments from past conversations into one continuous argument about why industrial cyber risk keeps escalating and why so many programs stall before they start. Craig Duckworth and Dino Busalachi open with a number that should stop any executive team cold: one manufacturer lost roughly $500 million in valuation inside 60 hours, and that loss had nothing to...

Most plants are running production on infrastructure nobody wants to touch. Somebody installed it years ago, that person is long gone, and the standing rule is to leave it alone so it keeps working. In this episode, Dino sits down with Jeff Slapp, cofounder, CTO and head of produduct development at SteelDome, to talk about what it would take to change that. Jeff has spent almost 30 years building...

Manufacturing cybersecurity can't succeed when IT acts as the enforcer and OT sees security as an obstacle to production. CyberHoot founder Craig Taylor joins Dino Busalachi to explain why punishment-based awareness programs create resistance, how positive reinforcement can turn employees into an active layer of defense, and why cyber preparedness belongs beside safety, quality, uptime, and availa...

Detection got fast, but remediation didn't. And that gap is exactly where attackers live. Manufacturers have spent the last decade building visibility into their plants: sensors, dashboards, alerts flying into every SOC. But knowing about a threat and fixing it are two different problems, and most industrial teams are still solving the second one at human speed. A ticket gets opened. A maintenance...

Cybersecurity in an industrial environment isn't just an IT concern. It's a question of whether the business can keep operating, and whether people stay safe when systems fail. Craig Duckworth talks with Tim Hoffman, a former NSA director of threat intelligence whose career spans military intelligence, defense, healthcare, finance, critical infrastructure, and industrial operations. They discuss w...

The air gap you're counting on probably isn't there. Dino Busalacchi sits down with cybersecurity veteran and Tulane University Cybersecurity Professor Joshua Copeland, to talk about the realities of protecting industrial environments, where uptime, safety, and production come first. They dig into why legacy systems can't be secured like IT, how routine security tasks can disrupt physical operatio...

Craig Duckworth sits down with Jowanza Joseph, CEO of Parakeet Risk, to unpack why third-party risk has become one of the most urgent challenges facing manufacturers and critical infrastructure operators. Jowanza spent 15 years in engineering roles at Adobe, Pluralsight, and MasterCard before founding Parakeet Risk to serve an industrial sector he saw as the most underserved when it comes to techn...

Two global dairy producers made headlines this week after breaches that started with third party vendors. Dino and Craig break down how it happened and why it keeps happening. They walk through the reality of remote access on the plant floor, from cellular modems to TeamViewer installs nobody remembers approving, and explain why a single sensor in a plant might show you 25 percent of your assets a...

For industrial leaders responsible for keeping plants productive, connected, and secure, cybersecurity cannot sit only with IT. Robert Maxwell joins Dino to address the leadership and operational gaps that leave OT environments exposed, especially when aging control systems, diverse automation platforms, and decentralized plant operations are part of the picture. They discuss what it takes to move...

This week we're bringing back one of our most requested episodes, because the problem it covers hasn't gone away. Dino and Jim break down one of the most dangerous assumptions in industrial security: that OT environments are air-gapped and therefore safe. Through real examples from actual plant floors, they show exactly how that assumption falls apart, from cellular modems inside machine centers t...

Craig and Jim revisit one of their most practical conversations: how to build a compelling business case for OT cybersecurity budget. They break down the IT/OT ownership gap that leaves manufacturers exposed, explain how to frame liability, physical risk, and financial impact in language executives actually care about, and walk through the options every organization faces. From doing nothing to ru...

Who actually owns OT cybersecurity? And when something breaks, who's accountable? In this episode, Craig and Dino tackle a question most manufacturing organizations still haven't answered. They address why CISOs are often handed responsibility for OT security without the authority to act on it, and how plants can score "green" on a compliance dashboard while remaining blind to 80% of their actual...

Many manufacturers don't realize that an investment in OT Cybersecurity also enhances Control System Integrity. In this rewind episode, Craig and Dino dig into why so many OT intrusion detection platforms get installed but never become truly operational. They address what gets lost when IT owns the tool while OT owns the equipment, and why the word “cybersecurity” itself can stall progress the mom...

Craig and Dino dig into the widening gap between IT and OT and why the plant floor keeps getting left behind. They break down what Dragos ' acquisition of Phosphorus signals for the future of IoT security in manufacturing, from cameras and label printers to X-ray inspection systems that ship with default passwords and almost never get patched. The conversation gets sharp on artificial intelligence...

Craig and Dino address one of the most overlooked problems in OT security: the IIoT devices your security tools don't automatically detect. Most OT intrusion detection platforms do a reasonable job of identifying core control-layer assets such as PLCs, drives, and motor control centers. The problem is everything else. Laptops plugged into the network, third-party devices brought in by contractors,...

The joint CISA, FBI, Department of War, Department of Energy, and Department of State briefing on adapting Zero Trust to operational technology landed on April 29. Has OT leadership read it? In this episode, Craig and Dino address how the European Cyber Resilience Act is quietly forcing US plants into failed audits, why IT teams still see less than a third of OT assets, how EDR tools are taking do...

Most manufacturing organizations still operate with a dangerous blind spot: IT and OT teams working in completely different dimensions with no shared visibility into plant floor cybersecurity. In this episode, Dino and Jim break down why 90% of manufacturers remain in the unaware-to-awareness phase when it comes to OT cybersecurity. They address what happens when IT tries to shoehorn enterprise se...