Fortinet OT Security Report 2026: Maturity Rises, Risks Persist

Operational technology environments are becoming more secure, but attackers are moving faster than defenders.

Industrial organizations are investing more in protecting operational technology (OT) than ever before. According to Fortinet, OT security programs are reaching higher levels of maturity across manufacturing, energy, utilities, and critical infrastructure. Yet the same research highlights a difficult truth for CISOs and plant managers: the volume, sophistication, and business impact of cyberattacks against OT environments are not slowing down. The gap between progress and risk is what defines the current state of industrial cybersecurity.

What was announced

Fortinet published new findings on the state of OT cybersecurity, showing measurable improvements in how organizations govern, monitor, and protect industrial systems. Key indicators of maturity include greater executive ownership of OT risk, broader deployment of network segmentation, and tighter integration between IT and OT security operations.

At the same time, the report highlights that intrusions affecting OT environments remain frequent, with many organizations reporting multiple incidents in the past year. Threat actors continue to target industrial control systems (ICS), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) platforms, and the IT/OT boundary, where misconfigurations and legacy protocols create exploitable gaps.

Why this matters

For CIOs, CISOs, IT directors, and procurement leaders, the message is clear: OT security maturity is no longer optional. Industrial downtime, safety incidents, and regulatory exposure are now board-level concerns. Maturing OT security means moving from ad hoc projects to a structured program with executive sponsorship, measurable KPIs, and unified visibility across IT and OT.

Procurement leaders should note that converged platforms reduce tool sprawl and operational overhead, while CISOs gain a defensible architecture against ransomware, supply chain attacks, and nation-state activity targeting critical infrastructure.

Technical details

• Executive ownership: More organizations place OT cyber risk under the CISO or a dedicated OT security leader.
• Segmentation: Network segmentation between IT and OT zones is becoming a baseline control, aligned with ISA/IEC 62443.
• Visibility: Asset discovery and continuous monitoring of ICS and SCADA traffic are expanding.
• Integrated SOC: OT telemetry is increasingly correlated in unified SOC workflows with SIEM, SOAR, and XDR.
• Secure remote access: Zero Trust principles are applied to vendor and engineer access to plant systems.
• Threat landscape: Ransomware, OT-aware malware, and IT/OT pivot attacks continue to drive incident volume.

OT security is maturing, but adversaries are evolving in parallel. The organizations that win are those that combine governance, visibility, and a platform approach

Softprom and Fortinet

Softprom is the official distributor of Fortinet. Our team helps industrial and enterprise customers design, deploy, and operate OT cybersecurity programs based on the Fortinet Security Fabric, including FortiGate Rugged, FortiSwitch, FortiNAC, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiSIEM for industrial environments.

This content was prepared as part of the Softprom DistriFlow project — an automated system for monitoring and adapting vendor news. Original source: original article.