Protecting Critical Infrastructure Means Getting Back to Basics

**Executive Summary:** Critical infrastructure organizations face growing risk as OT/IT convergence and increased IoT adoption expand attack surfaces; attackers—particularly opportunistic ransomware actors—often exploit IT misconfigurations to pivot into OT environments. The report advises rigorous asset inventory across IT and OT, repeated attack simulations and training, and basic security hygiene and architecture improvements to detect and mitigate attacks before they cascade into operational systems.