Cybersecurity for the long haul: Protecting legacy OT systems

Critical Infrastructure

Protecting legacy OT systems against modern cyberthreats

Many manufacturing plants depend on OT systems that stay in service for many years. That long run can hide significant cybersecurity risks.

17 Jun 2026 • 5 min. read

In a manufacturing plant built around uptime, a machine that has run the same physical process for years with barely a hiccup earns something less commonly discussed than a track record of throughput: institutional trust. Over time, such quiet reliability has a way of making a certain kind of scrutiny feel unnecessary, to the point that the equipment might become a security blind spot.

For a long time, there was a logic to 'leaving well enough alone.' Much of the operational technology (OT) in manufacturing was designed to keep the physical process stable, and once the production line worked, the sensible move was to keep the equipment in good shape so that...

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