Chet Brandon and Fay Feeney

Series Introduction: Managing Cyber-Physical Risk in the Age of AI

Industrial organizations are entering a new era of risk—one defined by the convergence of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and operational technology. Systems that once operated in relative isolation are now highly connected, data-driven, and increasingly automated. While this transformation is unlocking significant gains in efficiency, productivity, and decision-making, it is also exposing critical operations to a new class of cyber threats with the potential to cause real economic and physical harm.

Unlike traditional cybersecurity risks, attacks on operational technology do not stop at data loss or system downtime. They can disrupt physical processes, damage equipment, trigger environmental releases, and create conditions that lead to serious injury or fatality. As AI accelerates both the scale and sophistication of cyber threats, the challenge facing organizations is no longer simply one of protecting information—it is about protecting operations, people, and enterprise value.

This four-part series explores how organizations can respond to this evolving threat landscape by integrating insights from safety, cybersecurity, operations, and board governance. It reflects a critical reality: no single function can manage cyber-physical risk alone. Success requires alignment from the plant floor to the boardroom.

• Part 1 examines how cyber risk in operational technology environments becomes safety risk, and why safety professionals play a central role in managing these threats.
• Part 2 explores the dual role of artificial intelligence—both as a driver of more sophisticated cyber attacks and as a powerful tool for defense, resilience, and governance.
• Part 3 provides a practical operational playbook, outlining how EHS professionals identify, prioritize, and manage OT cyber risk, including the metrics and systems that support effective decision-making.
• Part 4 brings the discussion into the boardroom, focusing on governance, oversight, and the role directors play in managing cyber-physical risk as a core enterprise issue.

At its core, this series is about connection—connecting digital risk to physical consequences, connecting operational insight to strategic decision-making, and connecting the expertise of safety professionals with the oversight responsibilities of corporate boards.

The organizations that succeed in this environment will be those that recognize cyber risk for what it has become: a core operational and strategic risk that demands integrated thinking, disciplined execution, and leadership across the enterprise.

AI, Cybersecurity, and Operational Technology: Why Safety Professionals Hold the Key to Industrial Resilience

Introduction: AI, Cyber Conflict, and the New Threat to Operational Technology

The rapid advancement of digital technologies including artificial intelligence is transforming many aspects of the global economy. It is also reshaping the landscape of cyber conflict. AI-enabled tools and soon quantum computing are dramatically lowering the barrier to entry for sophisticated cyber operations, allowing attackers to identify vulnerabilities, automate reconnaissance, generate exploits, and coordinate attacks at a speed and scale that was previously impossible. As a result, cyber threats are evolving from isolated acts of digital intrusion into increasingly coordinated efforts capable of causing real economic disruption and physical damage.

This shift is particularly concerning for operational technology (OT)—the automated control systems that operate industrial facilities, energy infrastructure, transportation networks, and other critical components of modern economies. Unlike traditional information technology systems, OT environments control physical processes. Distributed control systems, industrial control networks, robotics, and safety instrumented systems regulate everything from chemical reactions and electrical generation to manufacturing lines and pipeline operations.

When these legacy systems are compromised, the vulnerabilities and consequences extend far beyond lost data or financial fraud. Cyber intrusions into OT environments can result in production shutdowns, equipment damage, environmental releases, and threats to worker safety.

In addition to economically incentivized hackers operating alongside of nation-state actors increasingly recognize the strategic value of targeting operational technology. Disrupting industrial operations can weaken economic stability, undermine public confidence, and create cascading supply chain effects across entire industries.

The addition of AI-driven cyber capabilities amplifies this risk by enabling adversaries to more effectively identify vulnerabilities within complex industrial systems and develop targeted attacks against critical infrastructure and automated manufacturing environments.

Two Perspectives on Operational Technology Risk

Operational technology cyber risk is often discussed through the lens of cybersecurity specialists and IT professionals. Yet the most consequential impacts of these attacks occur not in data centers, but in industrial facilities where automated systems control physical processes. Understanding and managing this risk requires perspectives that span both operational realities and enterprise governance.

Chet Brandon brings the perspective of a safety and operational risk leader with more than three decades of experience in highly automated heavy industries—including chemicals, metals, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing. In these environments, distributed control systems, safety instrumented systems, robotics, and other forms of operational technology are central to maintaining safe and reliable operations.

Fay Feeney brings a complementary perspective grounded in decades of experience advising corporate boards and insurance organizations on enterprise risk, governance, and emerging technology threats. Her work focuses on how boards evaluate complex risk landscapes, allocate resources, and oversee organizational resilience in the face of rapidly evolving threats—including cyber risk.

Together, these perspectives provide a more complete view of the challenge organizations face today. Cyber attacks targeting operational technology sit at the convergence of safety risk, business interruption, and enterprise governance.

When Cyber Risk Becomes Safety Risk

Operational Technology systems form the operational backbone of modern industry. When these systems are compromised, cyber risk quickly becomes operational risk—and in many cases, a direct threat to worker safety.

An attacker who gains access to operational control systems can manipulate process conditions, disable alarms, or interfere with automated shutdown protections. These disruptions can create pathways to serious injury or fatality (SIF) events, including:

• loss of containment of hazardous materials
• unexpected equipment startup
• overpressure events
• runaway chemical reactions

These are not hypothetical scenarios. They are the same failure modes safety professionals work every day to prevent.  More strategic opportunities exist to provide options to leaders to intelligently mitigate and transfer the risk.

Why Safety Professionals Are Critical to OT Risk Management

Safety professionals in high-hazard industries have long been responsible for managing low-probability, high-consequence risks—events that can result in serious injuries, environmental harm, major equipment damage, or extended operational disruption. Their work relies on structured methodologies designed to understand how complex industrial systems behave under abnormal conditions, how failures can propagate, and how safeguards prevent catastrophic outcomes.

Disciplines such as Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) and Hazard and Operability Studies (HAZOP) systematically examine how deviations in parameters like pressure, temperature, or flow can create unsafe conditions. These tools encourage teams to evaluate “what if” scenarios and identify the controls needed to maintain safe performance. In operational technology environments, the same approaches can be used to assess how cyber manipulation of control systems, sensor inputs, or alarm functions might lead to unsafe process states.

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) provides a structured way to identify potential failure points in equipment, instrumentation, and control logic, helping organizations prioritize vulnerabilities that present the greatest operational risk. Layers of Protection Analysis (LOPA) further evaluates whether safeguards—such as safety instrumented systems, operator actions, or emergency shutdown procedures—provide sufficient risk reduction, even when digital controls are compromised.

Beyond these tools, safety professionals bring a systems perspective that connects cybersecurity concerns with real operational consequences. They understand how technical, human, and organizational factors influence resilience. As industrial systems become more connected, safety leaders serve as a critical bridge between cybersecurity experts and operational teams, helping integrate cyber risk management into established operational risk frameworks and strengthening the organization’s ability to anticipate, withstand, and recover from cyber-physical disruptions. This unique collection of knowledge can be used to understand how cyber intrusions might manipulate industrial processes. Safety professionals therefore provide a critical bridge between cybersecurity experts and operational leaders.

The Business Interruption Dimension

Cyber disruption of operational technology can trigger large-scale business interruption. In continuous manufacturing industries—such as chemicals, metals, energy generation, and advanced manufacturing—even short outages can have cascading consequences across supply chains. Production losses can quickly reach tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Understanding these consequences requires operational insight that safety and operations professionals bring to risk discussions. Without this expertise the systemic nature of the risk is likely not identified, leading to widespread damage and losses. 

The Growing Importance of Operational Resilience

Safety professionals play a central role in designing resilient industrial systems by focusing on anticipating failures, limiting escalation, and enabling safe recovery when disruptions occur. Their systems-based approach—developed through decades of managing high-hazard operations—is directly applicable to cyber-physical risk.

• Layered safety protections are fundamental to resilience. By establishing multiple independent barriers such as engineered safeguards, safety instrumented systems, alarm strategies, and trained operator responses, safety professionals reduce reliance on any single control. In cyber-physical events, redundancy, manual override capability, and physical isolation measures can help maintain safe conditions even if automated systems are compromised.
• Emergency response frameworks further strengthen resilience by providing structured processes to stabilize operations during crises. Incident command systems, clear escalation protocols, and coordinated response plans enable organizations to shift to manual control, implement protective shutdowns, and safeguard personnel when digital system integrity is uncertain.
• Management of change (MOC) processes also play a critical role. As industrial environments become more digitally integrated, safety professionals help evaluate how software updates, network changes, or remote connectivity may introduce new operational vulnerabilities. This proactive discipline supports more reliable system performance and safer recovery from disruptions.
• Finally, incident investigation and business continuity communication practices help organizations learn and adapt. Rigorous root cause analysis of cyber-physical events can reveal weaknesses in safeguards, procedures, or training, while structured communication ensures accurate information reaches employees, leaders, regulators, and customers during disruptions.

Taken together, these principles demonstrate how safety leadership contributes to an organization’s ability not only to prevent incidents but also to withstand and recover from them. By applying proven approaches from process safety and operational risk management to emerging cyber threats, safety professionals help create industrial systems that are more robust, adaptive, and capable of maintaining safe performance in an increasingly connected and uncertain risk environment.

These risks are driving a growing focus on operational resilience across industrial organizations. In highly automated environments where digital systems control physical processes, resilience is the capability of an organization to continue operating safely even when systems are disrupted or operating conditions become uncertain. It reflects not only the strength of technology and infrastructure, but also the effectiveness of organizational planning, training, and decision-making during abnormal events.

Resilience begins with the ability to anticipate disruptions. This requires organizations to understand where vulnerabilities exist within their operational technology environment and how cyber threats could affect process conditions, safety systems, or plant operations. Scenario analysis, risk assessments, and proactive monitoring of system performance help identify potential failure pathways before they escalate into operational crises.

The second element is the ability to maintain safe operations under abnormal conditions. Industrial systems must be capable of continuing to function safely even when automated controls are degraded or compromised. This often requires layered protections, trained operators who can recognize abnormal situations, and procedures that allow plants to transition to safer operating modes when system reliability is uncertain.

Finally, resilience depends on the ability to recover quickly from incidents. When disruptions occur, organizations must be able to isolate affected systems, stabilize operations, and restore normal production safely and efficiently. Effective recovery requires clear response procedures, coordinated decision-making, and the capability to restart complex industrial processes without creating additional safety risks.

Ultimately, operational resilience has become one of the defining capabilities of modern industrial organizations. As automation, connectivity, and AI-driven technologies continue to reshape how facilities operate, the margin for error narrows while the potential consequences of disruption grow. In this environment, resilience is not simply a technical attribute—it is a leadership outcome shaped by disciplined risk management, informed decision-making, and the ability to translate complex threats into practical operational safeguards. Safety professionals play a pivotal role in this effort by ensuring that industrial systems are designed to withstand shocks, adapt under pressure, and recover without compromising the protection of people, the environment, or business continuity. Organizations that embed these resilience principles into their operations will be better positioned not only to manage cyber-physical risk, but also to sustain performance and trust in an increasingly uncertain industrial future.

Looking Ahead

Cyber threats targeting operational technology represent one of the most significant emerging risks facing industrial organizations. Understanding and addressing this risk requires collaboration across disciplines—from plant operations to cybersecurity to board governance.

In the next article in this series, we examine how artificial intelligence is changing the nature of cyber threats—and how it can also help organizations defend against them.