True stories
from the people defending
critical infrastructure.
Real conversations about OT security, ICS protection, SCADA, IT/OT convergence, AI, compliance, and the human side of keeping critical systems running. Hosted by Aaron Crow, founder of Corvo Security. 130+ episodes and counting.
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- Independent
THE FULL SPECTRUM OF CYBERSECURITY
OT, IT, AI, compliance, leadership, incident response, and the messy human dynamics where most security programs actually live or die.
Protecting power plants, water utilities, manufacturing, and transportation. Grounded in NIST 800-82 and the Purdue Model.
Bridging the gap between IT and OT teams, technologies, and the mindsets that often divide them.
AI, cloud, quantum, and automation in industrial environments. Practical impact, not breathless hype.
NERC CIP, SANS Five ICS Critical Controls, risk-based approaches that go beyond checkbox audits.
Building trust between teams, developing talent, and navigating the organizational dynamics that determine whether security actually happens.
Real breach stories, tabletop exercises, and lessons from the people who took the call at 2 AM.
Hosted by Aaron Crow.
Aaron is the founder of Corvo Security and a long-time operator in OT, ICS, and enterprise cybersecurity. He started PrOTect IT All because most of the cybersecurity world either ignores the operational technology side or treats it like a foreign country.
The show is a long-form conversation with the practitioners actually doing the work: incident responders, control system engineers, CISOs, regulators, vendors, and the occasional skeptic. No vendor pitches. No scripted talking points.
ON AIR NOW
The most recent six episodes, pulled live from the show feed. Each link opens the episode page on protectitallpod.com.
Sell the Value, Not the Fear: Funding OT Security and Getting Ready for Post-Quantum
Work with Aaron: https://protectitallpod.com/work/ The book: https://protectitallpod.com/book/ This episode: https://protectitallpod.com/ep130/ The OT Security Starter Kit: https://protectitallpod.com/starter-kit/ You do not need to scare anyone to get OT security funded. Shaun Six, President of UTSI International, makes the case for selling the value instead of the fear. Shaun spent about a decade on the operator side before his company fell into cybersecurity, and he and Aaron cover the ground in between: who is leaving the OT workforce and who is coming in, losing engineers to venture-funded apps, where to put the X and what OT expertise is actually worth, a one-page budget the board will read, and why a water district's cyber budget competes with a police cruiser. The last third is post-quantum readiness for long-lived control systems: pair the retiring expert with a junior, and build the inventories, including a cryptographic bill of materials, while you are out in the plant. Key takeaway You do not need to scare anyone to get OT security funded or understood. Put what you spent, what you got and what you are asking for on one page. Pair the people who are about to retire with the people who are just arriving and have them do the inventory together. And while you are out there, build the lists (including cryptographic) that tell you what is actually in the plant. Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:19 Welcome and introduction 0:55 From oil and gas operator to CEO: how UTSI fell into cybersecurity 2:16 Deploying connected equipment, and learning the exposures later 3:54 Aaron: learning from the intern, and "stop when unsure" 7:34 Why OT people are humbler: the risk profile starts with people 9:33 The workforce gap: who is leaving and who is coming in 11:12 Quantum at the conference: a myth on one side, a research team on the other 12:46 Losing engineers to venture-funded apps 13:42 Getting people into OT: Mike Holcomb, ICS Village and community colleges 15:49 Entry level with five years of experience 17:00 Physical I/O on the show floor, and the pay problem 18:22 Maslow's hierarchy and the 16 critical infrastructure sectors 20:33 The value gap: the expert with the hammer, and the five-day assessment 24:38 Where to put the X, fixed price, and the three-day fix 26:57 Quantifying the value: a trusted advisor, not selling fear 28:42 The one-page budget for the board 29:42 Water districts and city council budgets 31:08 Selling availability and reliability, not "cyber" 33:09 Cyber safety is physical safety: educating the board 34:30 Water: a lower-cost assessment for utilities 36:07 How Shaun got into quantum: the box he could not test 37:29 A book for CISOs: quantum and cryptography for non-specialists 38:51 Why AI and quantum are accelerating each other 41:59 Timelines for post-quantum plans 43:47 "Moore's law is dead" and the book behind the term 44:06 Aaron: what should listeners ask their boards this budget season 45:01 Insurance, assessments and standard frame...
They Deserve to Be Defended: OT Defense, Transitioning Vets and Weaponized Sneaker Net
Work with Aaron: https://protectitallpod.com/work/ The book: https://protectitallpod.com/book/ This episode: https://protectitallpod.com/ep129/ The OT Security Starter Kit: https://protectitallpod.com/starter-kit/ The small water utility down the road cannot afford a big consultancy, and it still has to be defended. Erin Burns is building a company around that problem. Erin is an Army veteran with roughly two decades in cyber operations and the founder of EVR:RDY Defensive Operations Group. He and Aaron take on the question every transitioning veteran asks, how do I get into OT, and the problem behind it: automation is closing the entry-level door just as small utilities need defenders most. They get into hiring troubleshooters instead of job reqs, engineering a low-cost data diode, why a tool nobody runs is worse than no tool, the air gap myth, and how Erin's team weaponized sneaker net to get packet capture out of sites that will never allow remote access. Key takeaway The utilities that cannot afford a big consultancy still have to be defended. If you mandate a standard, fund it, and build the people pipeline the same way you build the product: with problem solvers, hands-on apprenticeship and tools small operators will actually use. A tool nobody uses is worse than no tool. Chapters 0:00 Cold open 0:25 Intro 0:46 Meet Erin Burns 2:26 The question every transitioning vet asks 3:23 Hard hats and factory floors 5:43 Automation is closing the entry-level door 8:03 Ignore the job req 11:06 A pilot with local water sites 12:17 Automate to lower the noise floor 14:19 No juniors means no seniors 16:36 The operator wearing every hat 17:55 Engineering a low-cost data diode 19:28 Dave's network and the XP box 21:44 School lunches, police cruisers and cyber 26:19 A tool nobody runs 27:11 Why investors hate this model 28:53 The cellular modem nobody questioned 30:51 How many air gaps have you seen? 34:38 The historian under the tablecloth 36:31 What do you do with packet capture? 39:50 The air gap myth 46:04 Two different runbooks 49:50 Who defends the sites that can't pay? 53:57 Where to find Erin and EVR:RDY 55:20 Outro About the guest Erin Burns is an Army veteran with roughly two decades in cyber operations and defensive work, and the founder of EVR:RDY Defensive Operations Group, a company focused on affordable OT/ICS defense for critical infrastructure operators with limited budgets and resources. He came up through special forces support and early military cyber, became a cyber warrant officer, and by his account spent five years on an Army cyber team defending OT environments, on factory floors and in hard hats. He is now building EVR:RDY around that experience, with a focus on water utilities and other sites that cannot afford commercial tooling. EVR:RDY: https://evrrdy.com EVR:RDY pilot program: https://evrrdy.com/pilots Erin on LinkedIn: https://ww...
Trust Is Not a Security Control: Blast Radius and the Management Plane
Work with Aaron: https://protectitallpod.com/work/ The book: https://protectitallpod.com/book/ This episode: https://protectitallpod.com/ep128/ The OT Security Starter Kit: https://protectitallpod.com/starter-kit/ Zero trust asks whether something should be allowed. Zach Miller asks a different question: if it is allowed, and something blows up, how far does it go? Zach is a cybersecurity engineer in Colorado Springs who came up through K-12 network support on a shoestring budget, defense contracting and managed services. On the side he runs Skip to Secure, where he publishes research on trust concentration and management-plane abuse, including his Blast Radius framework. He and Aaron trace one pattern through five years of incidents. Kaseya and SaltStack in 2020 and 2021, then Stryker in 2026: each time the management platform itself became the way in, and the authority it already held decided how far the damage went. Segmentation is the fix everyone already knows. It is still a hard sell. What you will take away Why trust is something you delegate, not a security control, and how to put a limit on it What Zach's blast radius framework measures: reach, scope crossing, standing privilege, human concentration, automation visibility and recoverability Why the same PLC with the same vulnerabilities is not the same risk on a turbine as it is on an ice machine Why attacks now look like a normal workday from a cloud address, not a foreign IP in the logs Why one any-any rule undoes 477 good ones, and why a firewall starts from deny Why you verify every piece of work an AI agent hands back, however good the prompt was In this episode 5:03 Sleeping under the conference table 8:30 The open proxy everyone borrowed 10:24 From K-12 to defense contracting 12:59 How careers really get built 16:36 Where is the puck going? 23:22 A heat map for the smoker 25:41 Verify everything the agent does 32:31 Attacks that look like a normal workday 34:33 The work laptop on the home network 39:15 Security is never done 41:39 Where the word firewall comes from 43:33 The same failure, five years apart 44:21 What blast radius measures 46:28 The turbine and the ice machine 49:43 When the right account does the wrong thing 51:53 A firewall with one any-any rule 54:08 Where to find Zach's research About the guest Zach Miller is a cybersecurity engineer based in Colorado Springs. He started as a network and switching specialist supporting K-12 education, then moved through defense contracting, consulting and managed services into cybersecurity engineering. Through Skip to Secure, his independent research and training effort, he publishes white papers on trust concentration and management-plane abuse, including the Blast Radius framework and the LOLMgmt paper on living-off-the-land management attacks. Blast Radius white paper and scoring workbook: https://github.com/ridgestoneco/blast-radius LOLMgmt white paper: https://zenodo.org/records/21255394 Zach on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin...
A Guardrail, Not a Stop Sign: Securing AI at Business Speed
Work with Aaron: https://protectitallpod.com/work/ The book: https://protectitallpod.com/book/ This episode: https://protectitallpod.com/ep127/ The OT Security Starter Kit: https://protectitallpod.com/starter-kit/ Three months ago Ben Wilcox's company was running roughly 200 AI agents. When he checked the day before we recorded, it was 900. Nobody stood them up on purpose, and every one of them runs under somebody's identity. Ben Wilcox is CTO and CISO at ProArch, which means he carries both sides of the argument: the pressure to adopt AI and move fast, and the job of answering for identity, governance and compliance when the moving fast gets ahead of the preparation. Most conversations about AI risk are one of those two people talking about the other. This one is held by somebody who cannot pass the problem across the table. His position is not that AI is dangerous. It is that AI security does not start with securing the model, it starts with securing the environment you drop the model into: identity, access, data scope, logging and ownership. All things security teams already know how to do. What you will take away Why agent sprawl is already here, and why the real question is who owns an agent when the person who built it leaves How to say no to a risky request and still give the business a path, so the work does not go to shadow AI Why you fork a community MCP server and keep only the 20 of its 107 tools you actually need The vendor due diligence question the questionnaire never asks: who can read the key, and can you get the log Why physical segmentation is coming back for truly critical systems, and why OT never left it How security review can finally run at the speed AI-built code is written In this episode 2:42 Plan for when something breaks 6:31 The risks people are ignoring 10:03 Build it yourself and you support it forever 12:51 200 agents to 900 in three months 20:40 Defending at machine speed 21:46 Physical segmentation is coming back 24:06 107 tools and you only need 20 26:46 How the conversation changes by industry 30:11 Still working on the fundamentals 31:17 Third parties and the weakest link 36:25 A guardrail, not a stop sign 41:46 Bring only the data you need 49:30 Did AI write the book? 51:20 Security finally at development speed About the guest Ben Wilcox is the Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer at ProArch, a global technology consulting and services firm specializing in cybersecurity, cloud, data and AI, and software development. With more than 25 years of experience in technology, Ben has led enterprise architecture, cybersecurity strategy, regulatory compliance, incident response and large-scale business transformation initiatives. In his dual CTO and CISO role, he helps organizations balance innovation with security, evaluating emerging technologies from both a business and a risk perspective. ProArch: https://www.proarch.com Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-wilcox/ Learn more about PrOTect IT All: Work with Aaron: https://protectitallpod.com/work/
AI Is the New Shadow IT: Why Blocking It Never Worked with Jack Smith
Work with Aaron: https://protectitallpod.com/work/ The book: https://protectitallpod.com/book/ This episode: https://protectitallpod.com/ep126/ The OT Security Starter Kit: https://protectitallpod.com/starter-kit/ Shadow IT used to be a server in a closet. Today it is Linda from sales uploading confidential quotes to whatever AI tool she found first, and your corporate data leaving with it. Jack Smith has spent more than 25 years in enterprise IT, across infrastructure, networks, datacenters, cloud and incident management, and he hosts the IT Horror Stories podcast. His argument is that AI is not a new problem, it is the latest version of an old one, and that the reflex to block it at the firewall has never worked and will not work now. Aaron and Jack get into where AI genuinely helps, where it quietly does not, and the question of what happens when a system that gives a different answer every time is asked to make a decision that has to be the same every time. What you will take away Why blocking AI tools fails the same way blocking USB sticks and webmail failed The difference between a tool that optimises your work and a tool you hand your work to Why analytics and diagnosis are the strong case for AI, and treatment is not The training gap: staff get GDPR training and security training, and no AI training at all A one question test anyone can apply before pasting company data anywhere In this episode 1:19 Twenty five years, from floppy disks to AI 10:45 Shadow IT used to be a box in a closet 12:31 Why blocking it never works 19:53 You cannot throw people in the deep end 21:48 When a wrong answer can kill someone 25:40 The answer everybody hates: training 27:54 Never give AI your production environment 41:20 Ask who owns your AI policy 44:38 Who actually gets rich 47:08 The Times Square test About the guest Jack Smith has spent more than 25 years working in enterprise IT across infrastructure, networks, datacenters, cloud and incident management. He hosts IT Horror Stories, a weekly podcast about real-world IT incidents, what went wrong, how they were fixed, and what we can learn from them. IT Horror Stories podcast: https://ithorrorstories.eu/ "AI Is The New Shadow IT": https://ithorrorstories.eu/#rant07 Jack on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franky/ Learn more about PrOTect IT All: Work with Aaron: https://protectitallpod.com/work/ The book: https://protectitallpod.com/book/ This episode: https://protectitallpod.com/ep126/ The OT Security Starter Kit: https://protectitallpod.com/starter-kit/ Support the show: https://protectitallpod.com/go/support/podcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PrOTectITAll Email: [email protected] X: https://twitter.com/protectitall Faceboo...
Own Your Industrial Airspace: Wireless, Vendors, and the Parking Lot Crane Hack with Scott McNeil
Work with Aaron: https://protectitallpod.com/work/ The book: https://protectitallpod.com/book/ This episode: https://protectitallpod.com/ep125/ The OT Security Starter Kit: https://protectitallpod.com/starter-kit/ A wireless engineer sat in a parking lot, connected to a plant's crane anti-collision network, and had everything he needed to stop the cranes inside 20 minutes. Nobody inside the fence ever knew he was there. In this episode of Protect It All, host Aaron Crow talks with Scott McNeil, Industrial Network and Security Architect II at Global Process Automation (GPA), about the part of the OT network most plants never look at: the airspace. Scott has spent more than 20 years in networking and wireless, the last ten of them entirely in OT, and he sits in the integrator's seat, working across every manufacturer's gear without a product to sell. The conversation starts where most plants actually are: one flat network, off the shelf gear on the floor, and no budget. Scott's argument is that the low hanging fruit costs time and effort, not money, and that a stable network is the foundation for everything security asks for later: segmentation, inventory, monitoring, then a firewall between OT and IT. He walks through war driving your own plant, why a hidden SSID is not security, the wild west of industrial wireless protocols, wireless that was abandoned in power plants years ago and is still on the air, and where wireless earns its place. The second half is about vendors and access. Do not take the vendor's word for it, ask the questions before the gear ships, and treat every third party connection as your own exposure. Scott's rule for remote access is simple: this is my house, vendors connect on my terms, every session logged, with an approve or deny button before anyone gets in. Aaron adds the zip tie in the fan story, a backup switch that had silently failed months earlier and nobody knew until monitoring went on, and the two close on shrinking the wireless footprint that leaves your site and on Scott's podcast, The Industrial Wi-Fi Shop. In this episode, you'll learn: Why a stable network comes before any security project, and what to fix first How to war drive your own plant and what a passive scan of your airspace tells an attacker Why hiding the SSID and relying on obscurity is not a control Which industrial wireless protocols are standards based and which are proprietary risk The questions to ask a wireless vendor before you sign How to run vendor remote access on your terms: logged sessions, approve or deny, no standing tunnels Why monitoring finds failures you did not know you had Tune in to hear why your industrial airspace deserves the same design, monitoring, and ownership as any wired connection. About the guest: Scott McNeil is an Industrial Network and Security Architect II at Global Process Automation (GPA), where he helps manufacturers design, secure, and modernize the OT networks that keep critical processes running: architecture, IT/OT convergence, segmentation, resilient connectivity, and industrial wireless. A longtime wireless engineer, he created and co-hosts The Industrial WiFi Shop Podcast with Jeremy Baker, speaks regularly at OT and industrial cybersecurity events, holds a bachelor's degree in Industrial Technology from East Carolina University with multiple wireless and network certifications, and serves on the UNC Wilmington Cybersecurity Advisory Board. Important Links: LinkedIn of Scott McNeil:
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