OT Cybersecurity in Oil & Gas: The Risk You Cant Drill Away

Digitalization is transforming the scale and efficiency of Vaca Muerta, but it is also bringing a risk to the forefront that cannot be solved by drilling faster or producing more: the more connected an operation becomes, the more important it is to understand which systems are part of it, how they interact, and what happens when one of them becomes unavailable.

Vaca Muerta’s growing connectivity is already putting cybersecurity at the center of the energy industry’s agenda. A recent analysis published by InfoEnergía warns that many companies still lack complete visibility into the devices connected to their OT networks, even as these environments become increasingly integrated with IT infrastructure, remote access, suppliers, and external platforms.

The risk is not abstract. In August, Oldelval reported a cyberattack that affected its administrative systems, although pipeline operations and crude oil transportation continued normally. The incident makes a long-standing industry concern particularly tangible. In 2021, Colonial Pipeline suffered a ransomware attack that compromised its corporate network and led the company to proactively shut down its pipeline system while it assessed the scope of the incident.

The two cases had very different impacts, but together they show why resilience is not only about preventing an attack. It also depends on the ability to detect what is happening, contain it, and prevent an incident in one environment from compromising critical processes. In Oil & Gas, cybersecurity can no longer be treated as an isolated technical layer: it is part of the architecture that supports business continuity.

When IT and OT Become Part of the Same Risk

The integration of IT and OT has delivered tangible benefits to the industry. Today, it enables greater asset visibility, remote process monitoring, integrated telemetry, earlier failure detection, and decisions based on information that is much closer to real time.

But that same integration also changes the risk landscape.

Many industrial networks were designed for environments with far less connectivity than they have today. Now they coexist with cloud services, corporate tools, third-party access, and devices distributed across multiple points in the operation.

The challenge is not to isolate everything again. Nor is adding another security tool enough. The architectural question is what should be connected, to what, under which conditions, and with what level of access.

That is why asset visibility is a starting point. If an organization does not know exactly what is connected, who has access, and what role each component plays in the production process, it will struggle to determine what needs to be protected first.

Frameworks such as IEC 62443 help structure that discussion through risk assessment, the segmentation of systems into zones and conduits, and the definition of security levels and requirements for each environment. Rather than applying a standard in isolation, the real challenge is translating those principles into concrete architectural and operational decisions.

The Cost Goes Beyond the Incident Itself

For an energy operation, the most significant impact of a cyberattack may not appear in the compromised system itself, but in everything that depends on it.

An interruption can affect production, transportation, planning, contract compliance, or the ability to respond in the field. That is why, in addition to preventing incidents, a cybersecurity strategy needs to consider how quickly the organization can detect them, what it can isolate without bringing the rest of the operation to a halt, and how systems can be restored safely.

The conversation changes when security is measured from that perspective. It is no longer only about the number of alerts or vulnerabilities detected, but about how prepared the operation is to keep running when something happens.

This becomes even more relevant in a context where new investments continue to expand Argentina’s energy infrastructure. As new assets, systems, and digital capabilities are added, the technological surface supporting production expands as well.

Integrating Security Also Requires Understanding the Operation

At Santex, we approach cybersecurity as part of a broader technology integration challenge. Protecting a critical operation first requires understanding how it works, what information it needs, which systems support it, and how the people interacting with those systems operate.

Our experience in the energy sector includes projects where we integrate data, systems, and processes to improve visibility and decision-making across Oil & Gas operations. In parallel, in industrial cybersecurity, we have worked alongside Vectus and with Fortinet technology to strengthen distributed infrastructures, integrating security as part of business continuity.

Security That Enables Progress

The response to growing digital risk cannot be to slow down the transformation of the energy industry. Many of the next gains in productivity, maintenance, analytics, and decision-making will depend precisely on operations becoming increasingly connected.

The difference will lie in how that integration is designed.

Organizations that have visibility into their assets, properly segment their networks, govern access, and maintain strong response capabilities can adopt new technologies with greater control and less uncertainty. In that scenario, cybersecurity stops being a barrier and becomes an enabling condition for moving forward.

So, before deciding which new tool to add, there are three questions worth answering: Which part of the operation cannot afford to stop? Which systems are connected to it? And what ability does the organization have today to respond if any of them is compromised?

In Oil & Gas, digital risk cannot be drilled away. It has to be designed for, integrated, and managed.

If you are reviewing how to strengthen the security and resilience of your operation, let’s talk.