In OT, There Can Be Lives at Stake with Wylie Shanks, OT Cybersecurity Consultant
Show notes
This episode features Wylie Shanks, a cybersecurity consultant who leads an OT cybersecurity program for a large North American energy company's business unit.
Wylie has spent more than twenty-five years working with critical infrastructure organizations, designing, defending, and recovering environments that span enterprise IT through industrial control systems. In this conversation, he walks Sean Deuby through the Purdue model level by level, then explains what changed when Windows servers, domain controllers, and vendor-managed accounts moved into environments built to run for decades without interruption.
Wylie and Sean cover why safety and availability outrank everything else on the plant floor, why MFA and patch cycles that work in IT can be unworkable in OT, how forest architectures set up twenty years ago constrain organizations today, and how new resilience mandates in the US and Canada are pushing operators to prove they can run disconnected for 90 days.
This episode makes the case that OT security is less about importing IT controls than about translating between two groups of experts who have never had to speak the same language.
Guest Bio
Wylie Shanks is a cybersecurity consultant who currently leads an OT cybersecurity program for a large North American energy company's business unit. With over twenty-five years of experience working with critical infrastructure organizations, he designs, defends, and recovers environments spanning enterprise IT to industrial control systems. His expertise spans security architecture, incident response, privileged access management, and cyber risk management, translating complex challenges into practical, auditable solutions. Wylie holds numerous certifications, including GIAC Security Expert (GSE), ISSAP, GIAC Response in Industrial Defense (GRID), and GIAC Cyber Incident Leader (GCIL).
Guest Quote
"Safety, of course, is critical. That's one of the differences between, say, an IT and an OT environment is in OT, there can be lives at stake. The environment can be impacted. You have different concerns about reliability and safety."
Time stamps
02:40 Meet Wylie Shanks: 25 Years in Critical Infrastructure
04:59 Defining the OT Environment
05:51 Walking Through the Purdue Model
08:45 Explaining OT with a Thermostat
12:11 Ranking Safety, Reliability, and Integrity
13:39 Revisiting Stuxnet
15:21 Why MFA Breaks on the Plant Floor
18:36 Finding Windows and Active Directory in OT
21:29 Applying PAM and Least Privilege
27:14 Comparing AD Forest Architectures
31:19 Earning Trust with Plant Operators
35:41 Meeting New Resilience Mandates
40:49 Mapping the Threat Vectors
44:49 Facing AI-Assisted Attacks
47:41 Learning from Colonial Pipeline
53:15 Making Resilience Measurable
56:42 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Sponsor
The HIP Podcast is brought to you by Semperis, the leader in identity-driven cyber resilience for the hybrid enterprise. Trusted by the world's leading businesses, Semperis protects critical Active Directory and Entra ID environments from cyberattacks, ensuring rapid recovery and business continuity when every second counts. Visit semperis.com to learn more.
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