The Translation Tax

The Translation Tax

I'm in a strange seat. I spend my days on the phone with OT engineers, IT security leaders, plant managers, CISOs, and the vendors trying to sell into all of them. I don't work for any of them. I'm not defending a budget, protecting a project, or angling for a promotion. Which means people tell me the truth.

And the truth is this: there's a tax being paid in almost every industrial security program in America, and almost nobody is putting it on a line item.

I call it the Translation Tax.

It's the hours lost when an IT security analyst flags a "critical" vulnerability on a PLC and the controls engineer has to explain AGAIN…for the 14th time, why you can't just push a patch in the middle of a production run. It's the procurement cycle for a tool that could help that stalls for six weeks because the OT team doesn't trust the IT team's vendor vetting, and the IT team doesn't trust the OT team's risk assessment. It's the vendor demo that dies in the third meeting because nobody in the room can translate what the product actually does into language the other half of the room cares about.

Here's what I hear from the OT side: "They don't understand our environment. They want to run a Nessus scan on a safety system and wonder why I'm yelling."

Here's what I hear from the IT side: "They treat every patch like it's going to blow up the plant. I can't get a straight answer on what's actually running out there."

Both are right. And both are exhausting.

The fix isn't a new tool. It isn't another framework. It's people….specifically, people who've been bloodied on both sides. The engineers I place who move programs the fastest are the ones who can sit in an IT war room and an OT control room and speak both dialects fluently. They eliminate the tax. Decisions ship. Vendors close. Asset owners sleep.

If you're hiring pure-bred talent and wondering why your security program moves like molasses, the problem isn't your team's effort. It's the tax.

Stop paying it. Part 2 on HOW to stop paying it coming soon…