In this new chapter of Cybersecurity Under Pressure. Real Attacks, Real Lessons, we tackle the dangerous intersection of operational friction and systems engineering. A dealership laptop starts a DoIP reflash at 18:45. The authentication portal lags, the technician forces a shared session to stay alive, and suddenly the trust chain is compromised by a manual workaround. This episode challenges the "IT vs. Workshop" divide, arguing that latency, token refresh rates, and bay throughput are strict security requirements. We discuss how to architect revocation as a safety-critical OT function using transactional flows and A/B partitions, and dive into formally verifying the backend-to-bootloader handshake as a robust state machine.

Welcome to a new episode of Cybersecurity Under Pressure. Real Attacks, Real Lessons. It is Friday at 22:30, and a rail depot applies a minor network change to fix a flaky engineering link. By Monday morning, everything looks functional, but the security boundary has silently drifted. In this chapter, we break down why probabilistic defense and manual audits fundamentally fail in OT environments. We explore how to treat IEC 62443 zones and conduits as mathematical invariants, leveraging intent-based network verification to compute actual data plane behavior from configurations. Tune in to learn how to continuously attest your running state against a signed baseline and definitively prove your segmentation.

Welcome to a new weekly roundup episode of Cybersecurity Under Pressure. Real Attacks, Real Lessons. This week, we examine a cascade of high-impact events across multiple critical sectors: a massive DDoS wave knocking Deutsche Bahn’s passenger systems offline, ransomware forcing the University of Mississippi Medical Center to revert to manual workflows, a major data breach of France's FICOBA bank account registry, and a ransomware strike on the semiconductor supply chain at Advantest.

While the attack vectors differ, the operational failure mode shares a common thread. In this chapter, we analyze an uncomfortable truth: when core services degrade, operators stop following verified workflows and invent new ones under pressure. We discuss how this human response fundamentally bypasses your defined state machine, introducing untestable variables like shared logins and undocumented remote access paths. Finally, we explore how to leverage IEC 62443 zones and conduits alongside NIS2 accountability mandates to engineer degraded modes exactly like safety functions. Tune in to learn how to design pre-approved fallbacks, time-bounded break-glass procedures, and resilient logging that survives when everything else is on fire.

A vendor fixes an alarm at 4 PM. At midnight, that same remote tunnel is used to push an unsafe setpoint. Different intent, identical path.

How does your network know the difference? Spoiler: It doesn't.

This is the synthesis. We connect the dots from the previous episodes, the Oldsmar attack and the break-glass dilemma, to deliver a final verdict: You cannot patch your way to safety. You have to design it. We explore how to move from abstract frameworks like IEC 62443 to a concrete "abuse-resistant" architecture.

Tune in to learn why the most critical firewall in your plant isn't a device, it’s a design philosophy.

The packaging line stalls at 01:40 AM. Scrap is rising. The IAM server is down.

Do you wait for IT to wake up, or do you reach for the "emergency" admin password kept in a drawer?

That split-second decision is where security dies.

In this episode, we tackle the uncomfortable friction between production pressure and cybersecurity. We explain why "temporary" bypasses often become permanent backdoors and how to engineer a "Break-Glass" protocol that saves the plant without handing the keys to an attacker.

The question is: Do your emergency paths reduce risk, or quietly store it?

February 2021. An operator in Florida watches his cursor move across the screen on its own. It wasn’t a glitch; it was an active attempt to poison the water supply by changing sodium hydroxide levels.

But here is the terrifying part: The attackers didn’t use a zero-day exploit. They used the plant’s own maintenance tools.

In this episode, we dissect the Oldsmar incident to uncover a harsh reality: in OT, your "authorized" engineering path is often the attacker’s favorite backdoor. We break down how legitimate tools—like TeamViewer and shared credentials—get weaponized, and how to stop hoping for the best by designing for abuse using IEC 62443.

Listen to find out: Could you prove who changed a setpoint within one hour?

Picture a control room where HMIs work, but historians freeze and jump servers vanish. Nothing “OT” was hacked, but the digital floor beneath them just crumbled. This article analyzes why CVE-2025-22225 in VMware ESXi is not just another IT vulnerability, but a systemic risk to industrial safety. We explore the mechanics of the “Guest-to-Host” escape, why the hypervisor must now be treated with the same rigor as a PLC, and the recoverability engineering actions—beyond patching—you need to take in the next 72 hours to secure your operational substrate.