OT Compliance in 2025: Where Do Most Organizations Fall Short?

Beyond the Checklist: Turning OT Compliance into True Cyber Resilience

According to the SANS 2024 ICS/OT Cybersecurity Report, nearly 28% of industrial organizations still lack an incident response plan tailored to OT environments a figure virtually unchanged in recent years, despite an evolving threat landscape and growing regulatory pressure. Even among organizations with ICS-specific response plans, most treat them as annual check-the-box exercises rather than tools for real operational resilience.

Compliance frameworks like NERC CIP and ISA/IEC 62443 lay the foundation, but risk reduction only happens when those requirements are embedded into repeatable, tested processes. Mature OT Cybersecurity isn’t measured by policies it’s measured by how well your teams respond when production, safety, and physical operations are on the line.

This growing gap between paper compliance and operational readiness remains one of the biggest challenges facing industrial organizations in 2025 and a key reason many OT security programs still fall short when real incidents strike.

Compliance vs. Reality: Where Organizations Struggle

For many industrial organizations, the gap between compliance requirements and real-world readiness remains wide and dangerous. While policies and frameworks exist on paper, turning them into effective protections for operational technology (OT) environments continues to be a major challenge.

• Legacy Systems and Outdated Risk Models

Despite the evolving threat landscape, industrial environments are still dominated by legacy systems many of which were never designed with Cybersecurity in mind. These aging assets often rely on proprietary protocols, default credentials, and hardware that cannot be easily patched or replaced.

To compensate, many organizations lean on plug-and-play, short-term security tools solutions designed for quick wins, but not for the unique complexities of OT environments. These approaches might check a compliance box, but they rarely deliver lasting protection.

The result? Compliance might be technically achieved, but critical vulnerabilities remain wide open.

• Siloed Security Strategies

Effective OT security requires collaboration yet in many organizations, IT and OT teams remain disconnected. Cybersecurity tools, policies, and frameworks are often selected by IT departments without meaningful input from OT stakeholders who understand the operational realities on the plant floor.

This disconnect extends beyond internal teams. Supplier ecosystems including OEMs, system integrators, and third-party vendors are frequently excluded from Cybersecurity conversations altogether. Without consistent security requirements flowing through procurement, maintenance, and support processes, organizations introduce preventable weaknesses into their industrial environments.

• The OT Skills Gap and Cultural Disconnect 

The skills shortage in OT security is well-documented but the challenge extends beyond technical expertise. Many tasked with securing industrial systems lack a deep understanding of how those systems operate or the critical processes they support.

Cultural misalignment between IT-driven cybersecurity teams and operations-focused plant personnel only compounds the issue. Where IT teams prioritize data confidentiality and rapid patching, OT teams focus on uptime, safety, and production continuity. Without bridging these priorities, even well-intentioned security initiatives can stall or worse, disrupt essential operations.

OT Compliance in Practice: Hallmarks of a Mature Program

For organizations aiming to move beyond paper compliance, the most resilient OT security programs share common traits. Mature programs aren’t built overnight, but they consistently embed cybersecurity into operations without sacrificing uptime or safety.

Here’s what practical, effective OT compliance looks like in 2025:

1. Governance with Clear Ownership: 

Strong governance is the foundation of any mature OT Cybersecurity program. This means defining clear roles and responsibilities across IT, OT, and executive teams. When CISOs, engineering leads, and plant managers collaborate rather than operate in silos compliance becomes part of daily decision-making, not just an annual audit exercise.

2. Adoption of Industry Standards with Operational Relevance: 

Frameworks like NIST CSF, ISA/IEC 62443, and NERC CIP provide a critical baseline. But mature organizations don’t just check those boxes they adapt these standards to their specific operational realities, ensuring they align with how industrial processes actually run.

3. Comprehensive, Up-to-Date Asset Inventories:

You can’t protect what you can’t see. Mature programs maintain detailed, living inventories of all assets from IT endpoints to legacy OT devices. But this goes beyond just device counts; organizations must understand how assets interact within operational processes and where vulnerabilities may lie.

4. Network Segmentation Aligned to Operational Processes:

Effective segmentation isn’t about simply applying IT firewall rules to OT. Mature programs map segmentation to how production processes flow, ensuring that security controls protect critical assets without disrupting operations.

5. Secure Remote Access and Identity-Based Controls:

With remote connectivity now a necessity for industrial operations, mature organizations implement secure, identity-driven access controls for both IT and OT systems. Multi-factor authentication, role-based access, and strict remote connectivity policies help mitigate one of the most exploited attack vectors.

6. Continuous Monitoring and Incident Response Tailored for OT: 

Mature OT security isn’t reactive it’s proactive. That means implementing continuous monitoring for abnormal behaviors within ICS networks, backed by incident response plans specifically designed for OT. These plans aren’t just theoretical; they’re regularly tested, updated, and refined based on evolving threats.

7. Risk Assessments Grounded in Operational Impact:

Rather than focusing solely on technical vulnerabilities, mature organizations tie risk assessments to potential operational, safety, and financial impacts. This ensures security investments and compliance efforts directly support business continuity and process integrity.

Practical Steps to Close the Compliance Gap

To move from reactive to resilient, industrial teams should:

• Deploy micro segmentation and identity-based access across OT and IT networks
• Isolate legacy assets with compensating controls not wishful thinking
• Build cross-functional governance connecting IT, OT, and engineering leaders
• Elevate workforce readiness through hands-on OT security training
• Leverage recognized standards like ISA/IEC 62443 as operational playbooks, not shelfware

These steps shift compliance from paperwork to real protection without sacrificing uptime or safety.

Conclusion: Turning Compliance into Real-World Resilience

In 2025, meeting regulatory requirements is the starting point not the finish line. True operational resilience comes when organizations embed compliance into daily processes, align IT and OT teams, and continuously adapt to evolving risks.

Industrial environments are under pressure from both sophisticated cyber threats and mounting regulatory expectations. Those who treat compliance as a living, evolving discipline rather than a static checklist will not only reduce risk but gain a competitive edge through stronger operations, improved stakeholder trust, and greater long-term stability.

The organizations best prepared for the future aren’t just compliant they’re confident their teams, systems, and processes can withstand whatever comes next.

Where OTNexus Fits In

Many of the practical steps outlined like asset visibility, governance, risk alignment, and segmentation require more than policy. They need structured tools that bring compliance to life.

OTNexus helps operationalize OT compliance through integrated modules that align with key maturity criteria:

Whether you’re aligning to IEC 62443 or NIST CSF, OTNexus turns compliance frameworks into enforceable, measurable security workflows.

Request a consultation to see how we help OT teams move from policy to protection without disrupting uptime.