Beyond Compliance

Compliance checkboxes are getting checked. Audits are passing. Yet the breaches keep happening. Recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) audits of critical infrastructure revealed something troubling: organizations met mandatory cybersecurity requirements while compliance gaps and security risks persisted. Even more striking, field audits show that 30-40% of certified Distributed Energy Resource (DER) devices are misconfigured with disabled firewalls or default credentials still active.

The disconnect is clear. Compliance measures readiness, but what matters when attackers breach your perimeter is resilience. And right now, the only way to truly test that resilience is through adversarial simulation, not compliance frameworks.

Think about what compliance actually validates. You've documented your procedures. Your systems are categorized correctly (hopefully). You've implemented required security controls. But here's what compliance doesn't tell you: whether those controls actually work under attack.

The 2025 North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) audits exposed this gap dramatically. Organizations operating distributed energy resources alongside bulk electric system generation were violating segmentation requirements without realizing it. The problem? If you don't properly categorize cyber systems, you won't implement security controls proportionate to the actual risk. Compliance said they were fine. Reality said otherwise.

The manufacturing sector is learning this lesson the hard way. With 68% of industrial ransomware incidents targeting manufacturing in Q1 2025 alone, attackers aren't checking if you're compliant before they strike. They're testing whether your defenses actually hold. And when the average industrial breach costs $5.56 million (with downtime running $125,000 per hour), finding out you're vulnerable post-breach is catastrophically expensive.

NERC CIP penalties increased 20% year-over-year, with violations often related to inadequate cyber asset protection. One utility paid $150,000 for facility ratings failures. Another paid $100,000 for insufficient critical asset protection. But compare those fines to actual breach costs, and the message becomes stark: compliance penalties are a rounding error compared to the cost of getting breached.

Most organizations conflate red teaming with penetration testing. They shouldn't. The goals are fundamentally different, and understanding that difference is critical for operational technology environments.

Penetration testing identifies vulnerabilities. It's checklist-driven, focused on finding as many weaknesses as possible within a defined scope. You get a report listing Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), misconfigurations, and recommended patches. Valuable? Absolutely. But it tells you what's broken, not whether you can detect and respond when attackers exploit those breaks.

Red teaming simulates real adversarial behavior. The goal isn't counting vulnerabilities. It's answering harder questions: Can your security team detect a sophisticated attack? How long until they notice? Can they contain it before it reaches critical systems? Will your incident response procedures actually work under pressure?

For Operational Technology (OT) environments, this distinction matters even more. Red teams test your defensive security operations in scenarios that mirror how Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups actually target industrial systems. They use the same tactics that worked in the 2016 Kiev power outage or the techniques behind FrostyGoop malware targeting Modbus TCP devices. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) own red team assessment of critical infrastructure organizations revealed attack paths to domain controllers and Human-Machine Interface (HMI) dashboards, providing detailed technical findings that helped organizations understand their actual exposure.

Here's what makes OT red teaming particularly valuable: it tests whether your security posture holds when adversaries use industrial protocol exploits, not just Information Technology (IT) vulnerabilities. Can you detect lateral movement from IT to OT networks? Do your segmentation controls actually prevent attackers from reaching control systems? Will operators maintain trust in your infrastructure during an active test?

Security leaders often struggle to justify red teaming budgets. Compliance is mandatory, penetration testing is standard practice, so why add expensive adversarial simulation?

The Return on Investment (ROI) tells the story. Organizations report an average 400% return on OT security investments, primarily through incident prevention. The numbers bear this out: when breaches do occur, companies with extensive security investments face average costs of $3.84 million, while those with minimal security automation average $5.72 million – a $1.88 million difference that demonstrates why proactive investment pays off.

The math gets more compelling when you consider what's at stake. Half of 2025's ransomware attacks targeted critical infrastructure sectors, representing a 34% year-over-year increase. Manufacturing bore the brunt with 480 incidents in Q1 alone. When MKS Instruments got hit, they saw a 20% decrease in quarterly revenue and over $200 million in losses. Brunswick's attack cost $85 million.

Red teaming validates that your incident response actually works before you need it in a real crisis. It tests whether your team can handle the chaos of an active breach. It reveals gaps between your detection capabilities, documented response processes and procedures, and your actual operational security posture.

The question isn't whether your organization will face an attack. Ransomware groups are forming alliances like "The Five Families," sharing resources and technical capabilities. They're developing ESXi-targeted variants specifically for virtual environments. They're exploiting Fortinet vulnerabilities and SAP NetWeaver flaws to gain initial access.

The question is whether your security operations can detect, contain, and respond effectively when that attack comes.

This is where specialized OT red team vulnerability assessments become critical. Unlike generic security testing, these assessments must account for the unique constraints of industrial environments: systems that can't be taken offline, safety-critical operations, legacy equipment, and protocols designed for reliability rather than security.

PhishCloud Red Team Assessments are specifically designed for operational technology environments, combining adversarial simulation with deep understanding of industrial control systems. These assessments go beyond identifying vulnerabilities to test your organization's ability to detect and respond to sophisticated attacks targeting OT infrastructure.

A comprehensive red team assessment for OT environments should include:

• Realistic attack scenarios – Mirror actual APT tactics used against industrial targets
• Safety-first methodology – Ensures critical operations remain protected during testing
• Cross-domain testing – Evaluates security at the IT/OT boundary where most breaches occur
• Incident response validation – Tests whether your security team can detect, contain, and recover from attacks
• Actionable remediation guidance – Prioritizes fixes based on actual risk to operations

The goal isn't to break systems. It's to prove whether your defenses work under pressure, reveal gaps between documented procedures and actual security posture, and validate that your team can respond effectively when attackers target your industrial infrastructure.

Red teaming answers the resilience question honestly. Not through compliance documentation or vulnerability counts, but through adversarial pressure that mirrors real threat actor behavior. It's the difference between knowing you should be secure and proving you actually are.

Start by embedding continuous adversarial simulation within OT environments. Run red team assessments as standard practice, not annual checkboxes. Work with security partners who understand both the technical complexity of OT systems and the operational realities of industrial environments.

Because at the end of the day, adversaries don't care about your compliance posture. They care about whether your defenses hold under pressure. Shouldn't you test that before they do?

Compliance doesn't equal security. Passing a pen test is important, but it doesn't guarantee you can stop a skilled attacker.

If you're serious about resilience, and if you operate critical infrastructure or OT environments, you need assessments specifically designed for those unique challenges.

Learn more about OT-focused Red Team Assessments or explore how red team testing differs for operational technology.