# When Operation Technology Meets Information Technology: Challenges and Opportunities
## 1 Introduction
### Open Challenges  
Data suggest that the manufacturing sector is one that has obtained the most benefit from the introduction of I4.0 [8]. Manufacturing benefits from the higher level of automation and the increased flexibility of processes have led to better product and service quality while simultaneously reducing operating costs along the value chain.  
While the manufacturing sector is where we can see the most significant impact of the introduction of I4.0, its evolution also poses one of the main challenges: the opening of OT networks to the IT company network and to the Internet in general. This generates a number of novel cyber-security threats to the manufacturing environment, with several examples that have recently made the headlines of newspapers [9; 10], making it clear that this is a key issue to be addressed.  
OT and IT are two distinct but correlated technologies that are critical for the functioning of modern organizations. OT is responsible for the control and automation of physical processes, while IT is responsible for managing and processing data. In this paper, we propose a case study for understanding the relationship between OT and IT, and for presenting OT in the context of modern organizations.  
The output of this work consists of three main components: the physical asset, the IT department, and the bridge between the two. The physical asset is the physical machine, system, or infrastructure that is being monitored and controlled. The IT department is the counterpart of the physical asset, presenting the business logic of the company. The bridge between the two is the set of technologies and protocols used to connect the physical and digital worlds, such as OPC UA.  
We also highlight the importance of security, as both IT and OT systems are critical infrastructures and need to be protected from unauthorized access and malicious attacks.  
To ensure security, it is essential to implement robust security measures at all levels of the system--from the physical asset to the digital asset and the bridge between the two [11].  
The main problem is the heterogeneity of the OT networks currently in play. Many of these industry segments were designed several years ago and were not meant to be exposed on the IT network. This requires that OT networks and their interconnections to other networks be protected against the following:  
* **Old Attacks**: Attacks that were no cause of concern due to the close nature of the OT networks and mitigated years ago in IT systems; thus, they tend to be forgotten and risk resurfacing and causing damage through the new interconnections.
* **Legacy Components**: Many OT networks are built using old and legacy devices, architectures, or programming technologies, which are difficult to interact with, upgrade, or maintain [12].
* **Different Wrappers**: Legacy and custom networks entail the development of different wrappers. Standardization efforts [13] are still fighting their way toward a more systematic and uniform approach to basic cyber-security features in manufacturing connected systems.  
These problems are not particularly difficult to handle. Defense processes and techniques are already well-developed and documented in the literature. However, what is missing is a series of new software architectures and technologies that make it possible to implement the security processes that we already know widely in these new application scenarios (always within the Industry 4.0 paradigm).