Megan Samford

The second interesting conversation occurring in OT with use of AI is whether or not or should AI be allowed to directly control products in an OT environment.

And so if we're following like traditional NERC SIP strategies where you have an electronic security perimeter,

Right now, most thought leaders in OT are saying AI is great for analyzing data coming off of industrial products.

They can tell you when the products need to be serviced, how the product is performing, et cetera, et cetera.

It's good data that AI can analyze for the customer's benefit, but AI should not directly instruct onto an OT environment and say, open up a valve by 20% because AI believes that it should do that.

There is this principle that we will maintain in OT called human in the loop, where a human being has to review what the AI is recommending and then decide if it's appropriate to allow those constructs in the OT environment.

So AI is coming to OT, but it's going to look different.

So that would be my thought on that.

Well, I really hate to go back to COVID on this one.

But to me, I started to notice that the market was changing during COVID times.

And a lot of people were nervous for all the reasons that they should have been in the world at that time.

But people really were like, you know what?

I'm pretty happy in my role.

I've got a good team.

I understand the company.

I feel like we're making progress.

Where for most CISOs and other cybersecurity executives, it was like,

unless there is something horribly wrong here, I'm probably staying in my position.

Staying in my position feels safe.

And so there have been other papers and news articles written about this, but people that are pretty happy in their roles, I think are staying put.