A common reaction to new technologies proposed for operational technology environments has long been “It won’t work in OT.” Over the decades, innovations once deemed unacceptable in these environments—such as Windows and Ethernet in the 1990s, antivirus systems and intrusion detection systems in the 2000s, virtualization in the 2010s, and active scanning in the 2020s—have gradually become widely adopted. The author recalls an early experience in 2003, presenting intrusion detection signatures for industrial protocols at a pipeline SCADA conference. Despite assurances that the system operated passively and could not disrupt traffic, many asset owners remained doubtful and hesitant to adopt the technology.

Today, passive intrusion detection has become a standard element of industrial cybersecurity, embedded in specialized monitoring platforms and expected by management and boards as part of basic risk management. The article argues that if a technology provides clear benefits and has proven successful in enterprise IT environments, its adoption in OT is ultimately inevitable. The mindset should shift from assuming that a solution cannot work in OT to asking when it will be accepted, with organizations considering the advantages of being early adopters.

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Source: https://dale-peterson.com/2025/08/12/it-wont-work-in-ot/