• The 2025 SANS OT Report reveals a critical gap in OT cybersecurity: visibility deep inside control networks remains dangerously limited.

• While detection and containment are improving, most organizations still struggle to monitor SCADA, HMI, PLCs, and remote sites effectively.

• Garland Technology’s hardware solutions provide packet-level visibility at Layers 0–2, enabling accurate asset discovery, segmentation validation, and threat detection.

• Improved visibility transforms threat intelligence from theoretical to actionable, and significantly shortens incident response and recovery times.

• Regulatory compliance and operational resilience become easier and more reliable when visibility is built into the OT network from the ground up.
  
  
  

Introduction 

The 2025 SANS OT Report, authored by Jason D. Christopher, provides a clear snapshot of where OT cybersecurity is improving and where it’s still struggling. Detection and containment are trending in the right direction, with nearly half of incidents detected within 24 hours and around 60% contained within 48 hours. But visibility continues to be the major weak point in ICS/OT environments. 

Asset visibility drops sharply deeper into the control network, especially across SCADA/HMI, PLCs, and remote or unmanned sites. Threat-intelligence adoption remains low, and remediation often takes far too long, sometimes over a month, mostly because teams lack a reliable baseline of “normal” operations. For organisations running critical infrastructure, the visibility gap creates real risk around safety, operations, compliance, and financial stability. 

This is exactly where Garland Technology helps. Garland Technology’s hardware solutions strengthen the visibility foundation beneath the rest of the OT security stack. 

The Real Takeaway: OT Visibility Still Fails in the Places That Matter Most 

The SANS OT 2025 data shows improving detection and containment, but the same root issue persists: most teams still can’t see what’s happening inside their OT networks. Visibility is often acceptable at the perimeter, then drops away rapidly once traffic enters SCADA zones, HMIs, PLC racks, and remote field sites.

That blind spot drives most of the challenges the report calls out. If you can’t see the network or how it behaves, then detection, segmentation, threat intel, and incident response all become more difficult than they need to be. 

Start With Clean, Reliable Traffic Visibility (Layer 0–2) 

 Packet-level visibility gives you real data - not assumptions. With proper access to the wire, you can: 

• Discover assets across the OT stack 

• Identify unknown devices and unusual traffic before they become incidents 

• Validate segmentation with evidence rather than trust 

• Feed accurate, complete packets into your existing monitoring, SIEM, and NDR tools
  
  
  

Visibility is the foundation for every OT security control. When the data is real, everything improves. 

Expose the Hidden Parts of the OT Network 

Most ICS blind spots live inside the control network, which is also where the highest consequence events occur and where monitoring is weakest. Using Network TAPs, Network Packet Brokers, and Hardware Data Diodes from Garland Technology, you can safely extract traffic and gain visibility into: 

• SCADA and HMI activity 

• PLC and controller communications 

• Safety system behavior 

• Remote sites and unmanned facilities 

• Legacy devices that don’t appear in inventories 
  

This gives teams the ability to monitor the zones that matter most, where small changes can have major operational impact. 

Make Threat Intelligence Actually Actionable 

Threat intelligence only becomes useful when you can map indicators to your actual ICS environment. Without visibility, intel stays theoretical. 

When you can see your assets, traffic patterns and protocol behaviour, you can align threat intel to: 

• Real devices 

• Real protocol flows 

• Real weaknesses 

• Real changes on the wire 

This sharpens detection rules, grounds segmentation decisions, and makes patching prioritisation risk-based rather than date-based. Without packet-level clarity, none of that works. 

Improve OT Incident Response and Recovery Times 

The SANS report shows remediation timelines still stretching into weeks. Most of that delay comes from responders having to reconstruct “normal” behaviour because no baseline exists. 

Consistent OT visibility helps responders: 

• Track changes across controllers 

• Validate logic and configurations 

• Understand what happened 

• Restore systems with confidence 
  
  

It reduces guesswork and shortens recovery times significantly. 

Make Compliance and Resilience Easier 

Regulated sites consistently perform better because visibility is mandated. Once monitoring points are in place, compliance checks become easier and far more repeatable. The same visibility data can feed resilience planning, business continuity, and fault-tolerance work, without maintaining duplicate processes. 

The Simple Message 

The 2025 SANS OT Report reinforces a simple truth: all meaningful OT cybersecurity improvements start with visibility. You need to see what’s on the network, how it communicates, where risks sit, and whether segmentation behaves the way you think it does. 

Garland Technology provides the hardware foundation - at Layer 0, Layer 1 and Layer 2 - to collect that data safely and consistently. 

When you can see your OT network clearly, everything else becomes far easier — and you can move forward with much more confidence. 

Looking to add visibility to your OT cybersecurity projects, but not sure where to start? Join us for a brief network Design-IT evaluation or demo. No obligation - it’s what we love to do. 

This article draws on insights from the 2025 SANS State of ICS/OT Security Survey by Jason D. Christopher. Credit to the author and SANS Institute.