Fortinet, a global cybersecurity company focused on the convergence of networking and security, published the findings from its 2025 State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity report.
“The seventh edition of the Fortinet State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity report shows that organizations are taking OT security more seriously,” said Fortinet SVP, products and solutions, Nirav Shah. “We see this trend reflected in a notable increase in the assignment of responsibility for OT risk to the C-suite, alongside an uptick in organizations self-reporting increased rates of OT security maturity. Alongside these trends, we’re seeing a decrease in the impact of intrusions in organizations that prioritize OT security. Everyone from the C-suite on down needs to commit to protecting sensitive OT systems and allocating the necessary resources to secure their critical operations.”
Key survey findings include:
- “Significant” increases in integrating cybersecurity under the CISO or other executives, with 52 percent of organizations reporting that the CISO/CSO is responsible for OT (from 2022’s 16 percent). For C-suite roles, this spiked to 95 percent.
- Organizations intending to move OT cybersecurity under CISO in the next 12 months hit 80 percent (2025).
- Operational outages impacting revenue fell to 42 percent, from 52 percent.
- Best practices include implementing basic cyber hygiene, better training, awareness and threat intelligence.
- 78 percent of organizations use only 1-4 OT vendors.
- Cyber incidents vs. a flat network fell 93 percent.
The report is based on data from a global survey of more than 550 OT professionals, conducted by a third-party research company. Survey respondents emanated from Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mainland China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, the U.K. and U.S., among others.
