Forescout, a global cybersecurity leader, has officially published the results from its Global Industrial Cybersecurity Benchmark 2025 report, which happens to cover an international study conducted by Takepoint Research and sponsored by Forescout.
Going by the available details, this particular study revealed that 44% of industrial organizations claim to have strong real-time cyber visibility, but having said so, nearly 60% have low to no confidence in their operational technology (OT) and internet of things (IoT) threat detection capabilities.
To understand the significance of such a development, we must take into account a fact that, even though rapid digitalization has increased connectivity across devices, it has also given threat actors a bigger surface to target. In case that wasn’t enough, intensifying geopolitical tensions are now only making the situation worse, as there is now a demand for more nuanced, strategic and integrated security approaches to protect critical assets while maintaining operations.
Anyway, more on the given study would reveal how Industrial Cybersecurity Benchmark 2025 surveyed a total of 236 operational technology and automation leaders to identify their key challenges, maturity gaps, and strategic priorities.
“Industrial leaders tell us that they’re under intense pressure to modernize operations while still relying on fragmented and outdated security technologies,” said Jonathon Gordon, Directing Analyst at Takepoint Research. “They recognize that incremental fixes aren’t enough — they need a unified security strategy that bridges IT and OT, backed by executive support and driven by automation.”
Talk about the published results on a slightly deeper level, we begin from how supply chain threats and cybercriminal activity emerged as biggest security concerns, with 50% of organizations deeming them as two of their topmost concerns. For better understanding, this far exceeds concerns regarding nation-state actors (8%) and zero-day vulnerabilities (9%).
Next up, the research found how most organizations are still the early stages of OT cybersecurity maturity. We get to say so because no more than 17% of organizations reported mature OT security practices, whereas on the other hand, 64% classify their maturity as foundational, inclusive of manual processes and fragmented visibility and compensating controls.
Beyond that, 19% also identified their cybersecurity maturity as evolving.
Another detail worth a mention is rooted in lengthy remediation timelines that are exposing organizations to prolonged risk. You see, well over 33% of organizations still take more than 90 days to remediate threats. Alongside that, 63% take over 30 days due to insufficient metrics tracking, industrial maintenance constraints, and a lack of automation to streamline response workflows.
Not just timelines, widespread tool sprawl and fragmentation also remains a massive challenge, considering 57% of organizations deploy more than three tools to monitor IT, OT and IoT environments. The stated risk, like you can guess, is causing heightened risk from blind spots, alert fatigue, inconsistent insights, and increased operational complexity.
Rounding up highlights would be a piece of detail claiming that critical security tasks are still highly manual and time-intensive. In essence, nearly half of organizations cite vulnerability prioritization (49%) and risk mitigation (44%) as the most tedious tasks.
Found more than 20 years ago, Forescout’s rise up the ranks stems from its 4D platform™, which is best-known for delivering comprehensive asset intelligence, continuous assessment, and ongoing control over all managed and unmanaged, agented and un-agentable assets across IT, OT, IoT, and IoMT environments. The company’s excellence in what it does can also be understood once you consider it is presently trusted by several Fortune 100 organizations, government agencies, and large enterprises.
“Low confidence in OT and IoT threat detection is a warning signal, not just a statistic,” said Christina Hoefer, Vice President of OT/ IoT Vertical and Strategy, Forescout. “For industrial organizations managing complex, high-stakes environments, improving detection means visibility across all devices, monitoring OT networks and strategically investing in security controls that respect operational needs to reduce risks and enable effective incident response.”