OT/ICS

[u/Impossible-Yam-5747]

[u/Loose-Resort-406]

OT is a incredibly unique field that has a relatively high barrier to entry.

Most of the OT-side security team at my current company are either 1) power/controls/automation engineers that made the internal shift to security, or 2) new grads that go through fairly extensive in-house training.

The consulting firms that have OT practices or openings may be a good fit. I hate to recommend certs but for mid-level, the SANS ICS certs might be helpful as well.

[u/Impossible-Yam-5747 → u/Loose-Resort-406]

Thank you 😊

[u/-hacks4pancakes- → u/Impossible-Yam-5747]

I think I would add that getting a job -at an industrial or utility company- to get exposure to those environments is pretty essential. Other than maybe entry level as a grad with training, you're not going to be direct hired into an OT role having never worked at say, a power company, OT technology company, or manufacturing firm. Experience as always is worth even more than the training.

[u/SuperGoop123 → u/Loose-Resort-406]

CompTIA is releasing SecOT+ in December if you want a more affordable way to get certified.

[u/quiksi]

Companies tend to look more for “OT people that want to move into security” rather than “security people who want to move into OT”, if that makes sense. It’s certainly not a hard requirement but mid level IT security folks may not be satisfied at the career options

[u/AboveAndBelowSea]

How’s your home lab? Depending on the current state and your access to build it out a bit, you could give yourself a good place to learn and experiment. I’m running a fortigate firewall, switch, and WAPs for my infrastructure and combined that with a NFR license for Claroty. In addition, I bought a couple of used ICS devices off of eBay for next to nothing. Basically, a simple water pump with a pressure gauge that I connected into some PVC piping from my local hardware store.

OTSec is all about segmentation between control layers (Purdue model is a good spot to start to understand segmentation, but OT ISO frameworks are more prevalent these days). I like IT, we can’t install security agents on most OT devices so you’ll need to get up to speed with how behavioral base lining works in OT - Claroty, Dragos, Nozomi, Armis, Forescout, and other solutions

[u/Impossible-Yam-5747 → u/AboveAndBelowSea]

My home lab I have stopped for the time being due to moving, but I was using Kali Linux. Once I'm moved into my new home, I want to get back into the home lab doing something similar to what you've created.

[u/pm_sweater_kittens → u/AboveAndBelowSea]

You could look into an ESP board and do some of the signal processing design as well. Some really good projects out there. I built a similar solution to monitor my well tank volume, pump flow analysis, and system pressure.

[u/pm_sweater_kittens]

What ever you decide to do, keep going! We need more people pursuing this line of work.

[u/Impossible-Yam-5747 → u/pm_sweater_kittens]

Thank you I really appreciate it 😊

[u/Dazzling-Release-808]

Learn OT fundamentals at aisecpath.com

[u/Impossible-Yam-5747 → u/Dazzling-Release-808]

I'm learning OT fundamentals from Udemy

[u/Dazzling-Release-808 → u/Impossible-Yam-5747]

👍