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IT dependencies that stop the line
Many plant outages start in enterprise IT: an ERP that stops sending work orders, an MES on a shared hypervisor, or a remote access path nobody owns. Hillstrong calls this the IT tether, and you find it by mapping which systems the line needs to run.
These posts walk through that stop-the-line map and the access paths that sit outside the OT scope.
Field notes (5)
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· Roger Hill
From Asset Inventories to Stop-the-Line Maps
Build a one-page stop-the-line map for each production line: six columns, a named owner per entry, and a restoration time measured with a stopwatch.
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· Roger Hill
Who Can Still Log Into Your Factory at 2:00 A.M.
Why OT access reviews miss vendor paths like OEM tools, jump hosts, and cellular modems, how Akira bypassed MFA, and why every path needs an expiry date.
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· Roger Hill
Your ERP Is a Plant Floor Control System – Nobody Scoped It That Way
Why ERP and SAP MII act as plant floor control systems, what Clorox's $49 million disclosure shows, and how to triage a 9.9 CVE that no patch window owns.
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· Roger Hill
The Line Stopped and Nobody Touched a PLC
Why Mackay Sugar and fairlife stopped production with no PLC touched, the three IT tethers (order, host, access) behind it, and a dependency list per line.
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· Roger Hill
When Patching Won’t Protect Your Factory
Why patch metrics miss most OT outages: in most disruptions Hillstrong reviewed, an operational failure caused the outage. Map dependencies instead.
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