Each October, Cybersecurity Awareness Month is observed across several of the world’s leading nations, from the United States and Canada to the European Union and Australia. While each country brings its own perspective, they share a common purpose: to strengthen digital resilience through awareness, collaboration, and accountability. The annual campaign centers on protecting the systems and services that keep societies running, with varying themes around the world:
- United States (CISA & National Cybersecurity Alliance) – The 2025 theme, “Building a Cyber Strong America,” emphasizes resilience across critical infrastructure, local governments, and supply chains. CISA’s message is clear: cyber incidents against operational systems have real consequences for public safety and national security.
As CISA explains, “Every organization, from large utilities to small service providers, plays a part in protecting the systems that keep our country running.” - European Union (ENISA) – “Off the Hook – Don’t Be Phished” focuses on the growing sophistication of phishing and social engineering, a reminder that the human element remains a key risk factor in every environment.
- Australia (ACSC) – “Building Our Cyber Safe Culture” highlights event logging, legacy technology, supply chain resilience, and quantum readiness. These priorities reflect the unique challenges of critical infrastructure operators managing long-lived systems.
- Canada – “Get Cyber Safe – for Future You” promotes sustainable habits that protect individuals and organizations over time, from stronger authentication and regular patching to secure backups and data management.
At Industrial Defender, we take note of the emphasis on critical infrastructure. CISA and DHS have highlighted how cyber incidents can disrupt the essential systems that keep society running—power, water, transportation, manufacturing, and more. Their message is clear: operational resilience is national resilience.
For those of us in the OT cybersecurity community, it’s encouraging to see that recognition front and center. Much of our work happens behind the scenes: managing asset inventories, monitoring for changes, maintaining compliance, and watching for unusual activity. Seeing national campaigns spotlight the systems we defend every day is a reminder that OT security is not a niche concern but a cornerstone of public safety and economic stability.
"Take One Action" OT Cyber Security Checklist
This year, CISA’s message adds a simple challenge: take one action today. The idea isn’t to overhaul everything overnight, but to do something concrete that makes your environment safer or more visible than it was yesterday. In that spirit, here’s an OT-focused “do one thing” checklist, a set of actions you can take this month to verify, tune, and strengthen your defenses.
CISA’s theme of taking “One Action Today” reinforces that progress doesn’t always require sweeping transformation. For OT environments, that “one action” could take many forms:
- Validate your asset inventory. You can’t protect what you don’t know you have. Make sure every controller, workstation, and network device is identified with accurate technical details — hardware, firmware, and software versions. Check whether your monitoring tools are missing any known devices, and whether offline or isolated assets are properly represented.
- Review software and vulnerability status. Don’t chase every CVE that makes the news. Focus on what’s real in your environment. Cross-reference known vulnerabilities against your actual asset list, prioritize based on operational impact, and enrich with the latest threat intelligence.
- Inspect configurations. Compare current baselines to previous states. Do recent changes make sense? Were they authorized and documented? Identify any deviations that could expose systems to unnecessary risk.
- Check open ports and services. Confirm what’s truly needed for operations. Disable or remove legacy services and protocols that no longer serve a purpose.
- Review firewall activity and rule changes. Look for unexpected traffic patterns, rules that no longer align with policy, or recent changes that weren’t logged. Small misconfigurations can create big exposures.
- Audit user accounts and permissions. Review who has access and whether those permissions still align with their role. Check for privilege escalations or new accounts added since your last review.
- Check logs and events. Examine recent activity for irregularities — failed logins, new connections, configuration changes, or access attempts outside normal hours. Make sure critical control systems are included in your log sources.
- Review detection rules and alerting thresholds. Confirm that detection logic and IDS signatures are current, and that alert thresholds reflect normal operational activity. Avoid both blind spots and alert fatigue.
- Compare your environment over time. Awareness is not static. Look at changes across recent months or quarters — new assets, firmware upgrades, network path adjustments. Do they align with planned maintenance and documented requests?
- Verify backups and recovery plans. Ensure that configuration and historian backups are recent, restorable, and securely stored offline.
- Evaluate your asset discovery approach. However you track devices — through automated discovery or manual records — confirm that your process keeps data evergreen. Manual spreadsheets rarely stay current for long; schedule a review cadence that keeps reality in sync with records.
CISA urges all U.S. small and medium businesses, along with state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, to take one action today to improve their cybersecurity. Don’t wait for an audit, and don’t wait for something preventable to become a problem.
None of these steps require a major initiative. They are about paying attention to the basics, the same fundamentals that often prevent incidents before they start. In OT security, awareness means knowing what is in your environment, what has changed, and what should not be there.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is designed to inspire action. For the OT community, it is also a reminder that daily vigilance is part of a much larger effort. If you do just one thing this month, make it practical.
This likely sounds like preaching to the choir for those of us in OT security. Still, this month is a good opportunity to reflect on what awareness means inside our own organizations. Awareness goes beyond technology. It includes people, processes, and communication across teams.
If you want to extend the “take one action” idea beyond technical checks, consider:
- Meet with compliance and security teams. Compare goals, review how monitoring and reporting overlap, and find places to reduce duplicate work.
- Bring IT and OT together. Share current priorities, clarify boundaries, and identify where coordination could prevent issues later.
- Review policies and procedures together. Make sure documentation still matches how systems actually operate.
- Host a short information session with operations. Help technicians understand what to watch for and how to report changes or issues.
- Schedule a quick post-mortem review. Pick a recent patch, change, or event and walk through what worked and what could improve next time.
Even small efforts like these build understanding and reinforce shared responsibility. When compliance, security, IT, and operations learn from each other, the organization becomes stronger and more resilient overall.
This also highlights how compliance and security strengthen each other. When policy intent, system management, and continuous monitoring align, organizations not only meet regulatory expectations but maintain a more resilient defense.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a reminder of why we do what we do: to keep the systems that people rely on running safely and securely. It reinforces the importance of staying vigilant, continuing to make small, steady improvements, and taking practical steps forward. Progress in OT security is rarely noticed as a big, visible change but from consistently doing one thing after another to strengthen, protect, and sustain the operations that matter most.
