5 Cybersecurity Challenges OT Teams (Still) Face
As we’ve spent years working with operators and engineers in the electric utility and OT space, we’ve seen some of the same challenges come up again and again. These problems are hardly groundbreaking or new, but they are very real to those working in the trenches to secure critical infrastructure.
Here are some we hear over and over:
“I don’t know every asset we have.”
Many engineers don’t know if they’ve identified every asset in their environment. Without a complete asset inventory, vulnerability tracking can be guesswork.
But here’s the kicker that no one wants to talk about: with strict compliance requirements, some organizations don’t want to know every asset they have. Because if they do, they are then obligated to report and track vulnerabilities.
This dilemma can be tough. On one hand, you are risking the unknown of a potential attack. But on the other, you are knowingly adding more work and compliance responsibility to your already strained team.
Ghost assets prevent meaningful risk assessment and can remain unpatched indefinitely—until they trigger an outage (or worse).
“I am using spreadsheets for vulnerability management.”
Because so much focus in cybersecurity has been on IT, and the complication of OT systems, critical infrastructure has been left out to dry when it comes to innovative cybersecurity software. That is changing with companies like Bastazo, but many organizations are still using spreadsheets to track their assets, list known vulnerabilities, and track any patching or mitigation work completed. This is extremely manual and onerous, and usually falls to a few key engineers who burn out after a year of this tedious work.
This is not sustainable, in more ways than one.
“I get thousands of alerts a month. I can’t possibly handle them all.”
Say your team has solid asset visibility (yay!), and are alerted to new vulnerabilities affecting those assets (double yay!). Now it’s time to do something about them. But which do you tackle?
Some teams check monthly, others, daily, but one thing is consistent: the overwhelm that comes with the non-stop onslaught of vulnerability alerts. It would be impossible to address them all, so it’s up to you to prioritize what actually matters.
This is where frameworks like CVSS have been historically used. However, even this framework is flawed in its broad scope. Although this helps teams narrow down their top vulnerabilities with a given score, that score is not based on their unique environment or organizational profile. What is a 10 on the CVSS severity scale may be critical for one organization but low impact for another.
We won’t get too deep into this here (see our whitepaper if you want to go down the rabbit hole), but we prefer a decision-tree model like the SSVC, which takes into account unique attributes of an organization and is more relevant in the OT world.
"I get the CISA notices, the Microsoft notices - 99% of the content is for stuff that we don't have." — Interview with OT cybersecurity leader
“Patches pose a higher threat of downtime than attacks do.”
Patching isn’t a simple system update in OT environments. Engineers and operators often worry, “Will this patch break something I rely on, or bring down our operations?”
In OT, a well-meaning patch can spiral into a shutdown; decisions must be judicious and contextual. This requires a delicate balance between security risk and operational risk, and SMEs on both sides.
Although some patching is necessary, not every patch addresses a high enough priority for every organization.
“OT folks don't want to patch a live system for the same reason they don't do frequent vulnerability scans or active port scans-because of the real risk that the patch itself will break something.” — Interview with OT cybersecurity leader
“Compliance is high pressure with no upside.”
With our work in the electric utility space, frameworks like NERC CIP‑007 R2 require maintaining clear patch evaluation records and audit-ready documentation. The identification of vulnerabilities alone is only half the battle. Maintaining compliance documentation often doubles the work required of the team — at the expense of risk-based management.
But if you get compliance wrong, you’ll face steep fines and more work to rectify the misstep.
Compliance becomes what is prioritized rather than truly understanding the organizational risk of vulnerabilities and addressing what matters most.
“These cybersec professionals would love to be securing the grid but instead they're checking every month for every version of each software/hardware device - that in and of itself is a huge problem.” — Interview with OT cybersecurity leader
In our research, our team found that security professionals in organizations with NERC CIP requirements spend on average 75% of their time on compliance documentation.
How Bastazo Supports Teams with These Challenges
OT asset visibility
Although we do not scan your network for assets (but have partners who can), you can import asset list files (WINinfo or CSV) and system baselines into a centralized inventory.
Automated patch & vulnerability identification for your assets
Bastazo cross-references our aggregated database of CISA KEV, NVD CVEs, and numerous vendor or software project advisories with your actual systems. No more manually cross-referencing vendor websites with your assets.
Risk-based prioritization of your top 5% of vulnerabilities
With your organizational profile, our AI model identifies top adversaries then prioritizes vulnerabilities based on exploitability, automation, system exposure, and human impact. This gives you demonstrable reasoning for addressing a vulnerability.
Actionable playbooks for safe & effective remediation
Not everything is worth a patch. Our platform automatically pulls remediation plans for the vulnerabilities you’ve decided to tackle, giving you exportable playbooks you can tailor to your SOPs and SMEs.
Audit evidence as you go
Generate mitigation plans and audit trails in one click—showing patch decisions, timelines, and justifications.
Bottom Line
OT leaders in the utility space are pulled in a thousand directions—facing threats, outages, and compliance requirements all at once. Bastazo isn’t just another tool, it’s the glue between important vulnerabilities and practical actions. Book a demo with us today if you’re facing these challenges.
