When OT Started Speaking IT: A Decade of Convergence
I came into operational-technology security at a moment when the field was still figuring out what it wanted to be. NERC CIP v3 was the working regime; v5 was on its way; and the first generation of Smart Grid pilots was starting to land at utilities across North America. That stretch — roughly 2012 to 2018 — is where most of modern ICS security's practitioner vocabulary got fixed. Walking the floor at DistribuTECH 2025 in Dallas this past March was a useful prompt to look back at that window from where the industry sits today — and to write down which lessons still hold up. ...