Governance, Not Technology, Is Holding OT Cybersecurity Back
Reflections from an OT Cybersecurity Practitioner
After another year delivering OT cybersecurity services and solutions, one observation continues to surface, a pattern repeated consistently over time.
While technology is often challenging, OT cybersecurity maturity is more often constrained by governance behaviour, organisational incentives, and how decisions are made. This is not always a comfortable conclusion, but it is one repeatedly borne out in practice.
Across almost all organisations we engage with, governance consistently emerges as a persistent pain point. Not because standards, frameworks, or tooling are unavailable, but because human and organisational dynamics intervene, including:
- Fear of accountability
- Personal agendas
- Pride and ego
People are understandably protective of the sites, systems, and assets they are responsible for. Ownership and pride are natural in operational environments and there is nothing wrong with that. However, external scrutiny can feel personal, particularly when weaknesses or gaps are surfaced. When this happens, honest conversations about risk can be unintentionally suppressed, slowing meaningful progress.
These behaviours are rarely driven by bad intent. More often, they are the product of systems and incentives that reward:
- Stability over transparency
(prioritising perceived operational calm over exposing real issues) - Appearance over accuracy
(reporting what looks acceptable rather than what is actually true) - Delay over decisive action
(choosing continued assessment instead of accountable decisions)
Cultural and regional factors also play a significant role. Attitudes towards authority, accountability, challenge, and risk vary across the world. As a result, there is no universal engagement model for OT cybersecurity. Effective approaches must be tailored to work with these cultural dynamics, not against them.
The outcome is frequently analysis paralysis, waiting for the perfect solution, the perfect process, or the perfect end state.
In OT cybersecurity, there is no quick fix and no silver bullet. Maturity takes time. The first priority should always be establishing a realistic baseline, implementing the fundamentals well, and improving deliberately through continuous, incremental steps. Progress will always outperform perfection.
Healthy challenge is essential and should be encouraged. However, challenge must not become a mechanism to indefinitely defer action. At some point, pragmatism must prevail and the core mission of safe, reliable, and resilient operations must take priority.
Another recurring theme is management visibility. Senior leaders are often operating with an incomplete or sanitised view of operational reality. Not always by design, but frequently because teams fear how transparency may reflect on them. This disconnect leads to misaligned priorities, misplaced confidence, and decisions made on partial truth.
More mature organisations address this by ensuring leadership:
- Actively drives visibility across teams
- Rewards transparency rather than punishing it
- Ties meaningful KPIs to outcomes, not optics
At OTIFYD, we work with organisations that recognise OT cybersecurity maturity is as much about governance and decision-making as it is about technology. We help establish realistic baselines, improve visibility, and support sustained progress aligned with operational reality.
If this reflects the challenges you’re seeing in your environment, we’d welcome a conversation.
There is no such thing as 100% OT cybersecurity. But there is a more pragmatic, resilient, and achievable position every organisation can reach.
The real question is:
Are we protecting operations, or protecting organisational comfort?
By Serkan Yusuf (Jan 2026)
