Operational Technology is a Motivator

Operational Technology cybersecurity became my career focus long before I joined Dragos. but it was the first IR case I handled while at Dragos that really solidified it as a passion. It’s hard to believe that was over 4 years ago.

We’ve heard impacts of OT compromise can extend past the network. Working where cyber-meets-physical requires evaluating risk with other variables IT professionals may not be used to. The media can hype catastrophic messaging and others may use it to communicate an agenda, but it feels different when you directly experience that risk realized.

I did incident response consulting at an IT company for 5 years prior to joining Dragos and admittedly lost my passion for the work overtime. At first, every case was different and exciting. After a while, however, they all felt the same. To be honest, my previous team was brought in a few times solely so the victim organization could show due diligence in their public disclosure.

We were a much smaller company when Dragos supported our first IR case. I was the only responder at the time and jumped in with confidence. It was the most stressful case of my career but for different reasons. The focus, analysis, and pressures were all different. Reporting wasn’t a slide deck to executive leadership as much as personal conversations. Our work impacted livelihoods. Defending these networks meant more to me after 2 hours of being onsite even though I had made it my career years before. My passion was back, and I dedicated the following years to scaling our global services to enable others and help improve the community. I am fortunate now to be providing strategic direction for the largest OT security company in the world.

My favorite part of DISC (Dragos’ annual conference) and meeting OT professionals is hearing others’ resonating stories. Working in this space means you may be sitting across from those that provide insulin for yourself or meet the team that manufactures a medical device keeping a family member alive or facilitated the birth of your child. My resonating story happened over 4 years ago, and I am just as motivated today as I was sitting in that conference room. While the details of these stories can’t often be shared, if you work in OT, you may just be someone’s hero even though they don’t know your name. What an awesome community to be a part of.