OT Security for Boards: The Questions Directors Should Ask

Most boards I sit with treat OT security as a special category — an "engineering issue" the CISO will handle, distinct from the cyber risk reviewed quarterly. That framing was reasonable a decade ago.

Five priority points from the full essay:

▸ OT security is now a board-level risk in any business with industrial assets — not a back-office concern.
▸ The five priority questions every board should be asking are about asset visibility, third-party access, segmentation, monitoring, and incident response — in that order.
▸ CISOs typically over-report on tooling and under-report on residual risk closure. That's the opposite of what boards need.
▸ Regulatory compliance does not equal OT security. They overlap maybe 60% in mature sectors, less elsewhere.

The full 2500-word essay walks through frameworks, war stories, and FAQs.

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#OTSecurity #IndustrialSecurity #BoardGovernance #CorporateGovernance #ICS

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Pillar Essay: OT Security for Boards: The Questions Directors Should Ask
What audit committees and executive teams need on the table — and what their CISOs rarely bring on their own.

Most boards I sit with treat OT security as a special category — an "engineering issue" the CISO will handle, distinct from the cyber risk reviewed quarterly. That framing was reasonable a decade ago. It is no longer.

TLDR:
· OT security is now a board-level risk in any business with industrial assets — not a back-office concern.
· The five priority questions every board should be asking are about asset visibility, third-party access, segmentation, monitoring, and incident response — in that order.
· CISOs typically over-report on tooling and under-report on residual risk closure. That's the opposite of what boards need.
· Regulatory compliance does not equal OT security. They overlap maybe 60% in mature sectors, less elsewhere.

Full essay (and free PDF version): https://matthewcarr.com/insights/ot-security-for-boards

For when you want to forward to a specific contact (CISO, board-chair friend, journalist) with a personal note.

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