Dr Christopher Beggs
Dr Christopher Beggs has spent more than 20 years working at the intersection of industrial operations and cyber security. As Founder and Principal Consultant at SIS Industrial Cyber Security, he has led more than 300 OT and critical infrastructure security engagements across the energy, water, transport, mining, oil and gas, and manufacturing sectors. With a PhD in control systems security and cyber terrorism, Christopher has helped advance OT security practices through consulting, research, training, and incident preparedness. He is the creator of the Industrial Cyber Security Principle Method™ and author of One Hack Away.
Christopher is passionate about bridging the gap between engineering, operations, and cyber security, helping organisations build practical, resilient defences that strengthen the security and resilience of critical infrastructure. He regularly works with engineers, operators, executives, and security leaders to protect what keeps the world running.
10:00 amYour OT Security Program Isn’t Working
40 minutesDr Christopher Beggs
Your OT Security Program Isn’t Working
Industrial cyber security programs often fail even after substantial investment not because organisations don’t care, but because the approach is wrong. Environments that look secure on paper can remain dangerously exposed in practice: dashboards show green, audits are passed, and major tools are deployed, yet critical weaknesses persist beneath the surface. These include blanket controls, fragmented ownership, poor sequencing, and weak alignment between business priorities and security decisions.
In many cases, the problem isn’t a lack of controls it’s that the controls don’t reflect how OT environments actually operate. This talk breaks down a practical six-step approach to planning, governing, delivering, and measuring OT security uplift. It is built around six principles: Be Business-Driven, Make Risk-Based Decisions, Take an Enterprise-Wide View, Work Methodically, Stay OT-Centric, and Stay Assurance-Focused. Together, they provide a structured way to improve security in real operating environments, rather than treating OT security as a collection of disconnected technical activities.
The session draws on patterns seen repeatedly across industrial programs. It anchors decisions in operational and business consequences not technical preference. It prioritises effort where failure would have the greatest impact. It scales across sites and functions to remove silos and blind spots. Most importantly, it addresses a common failure point: organisations often do the right things but in the wrong order leading to gaps, rework, and false confidence.
The approach keeps decisions OT-specific and treats assurance as evidence that controls actually work under real conditions not just on paper.
Strong OT security isn’t defined by more controls, more certifications, or more tools. It’s defined by the consistent ability to protect operations in the real world.
This isn’t about doing more it’s about doing the right things, in the right order, for the right reasons