Protocol Risk Is Business Risk: What CISOs Need to Know About OT Communications

Protocols define how trust is enforced—or ignored.

Many OT protocols were not designed to prevent tampering or impersonation. Secure connectivity requires upgrading not just networks, but communication semantics.

CISO-Level Expectations

• Authenticated protocols by default

• Encryption at trust boundaries

• Roadmaps away from insecure legacy protocols

• Explicit risk acceptance where encryption is infeasible

Executive Insight

Unsecured protocols create invisible attack paths that bypass network defenses entirely.

Final Thought: Insecure Protocols Undermine Every Other Control

Network segmentation, firewalls, and monitoring all assume that communications behave as expected. Insecure or unauthenticated protocols break that assumption.

When CISOs allow insecure protocols without explicit risk acceptance and migration planning, they are effectively waiving integrity controls across critical systems. Protocol modernization is slow—but ignoring it guarantees long-term systemic risk.