The first time I approached an OT environment, I assumed that the strategies effective in IT cybersecurity would be equally applicable. I was wrong. The experience revealed a fundamental difference, highlighting the need for a distinct approach to OT cyber risk management. The mistake was not technical. It was conceptual. I was treating OT as another security domain that needed stronger controls, better tooling and greater discipline. But OT lives under different conditions. Systems stay in service for years, sometimes decades. Patching is limited. Change windows are negotiated. Vendor dependencies are part of daily operations. Asset visibility is often incomplete and the highly distributed ...