700-765 · Question #106
What are the competing IT and Operation Technology (OT) priorities that make securing loT difficult?
The correct answer is C. Security vs availability. The core challenge in securing IoT stems from the fundamental conflict between IT's priority of maintaining security controls and OT's priority of ensuring continuous availability.
Question
What are the competing IT and Operation Technology (OT) priorities that make securing loT difficult?
Options
- AHackers vs safety
- BMalfunctions vs. output
- CSecurity vs availability
- DInnovation vs. manufacturing
How the community answered
(38 responses)- A5% (2)
- B3% (1)
- C89% (34)
- D3% (1)
Why each option
The core challenge in securing IoT stems from the fundamental conflict between IT's priority of maintaining security controls and OT's priority of ensuring continuous availability.
Hackers vs. safety conflates an external threat actor with an internal operational concern, which does not accurately describe the organizational priority conflict between IT and OT teams.
Malfunctions vs. output describes a reliability and productivity concern internal to OT operations, not a competing priority between IT and OT regarding security strategy.
Operational Technology environments treat uptime as non-negotiable - industrial control systems, manufacturing lines, and utility infrastructure often cannot be patched, rebooted, or taken offline without halting critical physical processes and incurring significant operational or safety consequences. IT security practices, however, require frequent patching, monitoring agents, and the ability to isolate or shut down compromised systems, creating an irreconcilable tension that makes applying standard security controls to IoT and OT environments extremely difficult.
Innovation vs. manufacturing describes a general business tension between R&D and production functions, not the specific security-versus-uptime conflict that defines the IT-OT challenge.
Concept tested: IT vs OT competing priorities in IoT security
Source: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/internet-of-things/iot-security.html
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