Minimizing the Consequences of Shared Credentials Across IT and OT Environments

Dragos highlights that 44% of OT service engagements involved shared credentials, and when paired with widespread improper network segmentation (77%), this significantly increases the risk of adversary reconnaissance and lateral movement from IT into ICS/OT; the report explains how default and reused credentials, single AD domains, and tools like BloodHound facilitate these attacks, and recommends eliminating default/vendor accounts, enforcing unique per-endpoint credentials via password vaults and RBAC, applying MFA for remote access, segregating AD domains between IT and OT, strengthening segmentation, and continuously monitoring OT networks for anomalous access.