Honeywell Technologies finds 88% of OT leaders call security mature — only 21% have full asset inventory

The 2026 Operational Technology Cybersecurity Benchmark Report arrives as critical infrastructure operators face a widening threat surface. The survey, spanning more than 600 cybersecurity risk, compliance and operations leaders across the Americas, EMEA and APAC, reveals a stark pattern: organizations believe their defenses are mature, yet nearly four in five lack a complete inventory of the OT assets those defenses are meant to protect. This blind spot extends to the operational environment itself — only 33% have fully integrated OT into a centralized security operations center, and just 20% continuously monitor connected IoT devices such as cameras and sensors.

The disconnect matters because the report ties visibility directly to resilience. Respondents with stronger visibility are four times better positioned to identify, respond to and recover from incidents, according to the findings. Meanwhile, the human and financial stakes are climbing: organizations reported an average of 16.2 hours of downtime from their most significant cybersecurity incidents, with losses reaching up to $500,000 per hour. Cyber incidents are now viewed not merely as technology events but as operational issues affecting employee safety, customer service and production continuity.

What happens next hinges on whether industrial leaders treat the report's findings as a call to close their visibility gaps before AI-enabled threats accelerate. The survey shows 99% expect AI to affect OT security within two to three years, yet only 23% use autonomous or agentic operation for threat detection today. For the energy, maritime, oil and gas, healthcare and manufacturing sectors surveyed, the test will be whether asset inventory and monitoring catch up to stated confidence — or whether the gap persists until the next major incident forces the issue.