Approach
Service, not software
We do not resell platforms. We assess, segment, test, and advise — and when a tool is the right fit for your environment, we tell you which one and why, with no commission shaping the recommendation.
Company
Cascadia OT Security is the Pacific Northwest's dedicated operational technology and industrial control system cybersecurity practice. We exist because the systems that keep production moving, people safe, and regional economies running deserve something better than a software license.
Our Story
We founded Cascadia OT Security because we watched too many Pacific Northwest facilities — data centers, manufacturers, critical infrastructure — receive generic IT security assessments and come away with reports that missed the actual operational risk entirely. The recommendations did not map to the plant floor. The controls did not account for safety systems. The threat models did not reflect the adversaries already targeting their sector.
The incumbents in operational technology cybersecurity answered this problem by building expensive software platforms. We chose the opposite path. We built a practice — a dedicated team of operators, red teamers, and physical security consultants whose full-time focus is the unique security demands of industrial environments. No platform to sell. No license to renew. Just hands-on work, delivered where you operate.
The Pacific Northwest is home to one of the densest concentrations of data center and heavy manufacturing capacity in North America — and to the grid, seismic, and operational realities that make the region distinct. We live here. The facilities we serve operate here. The work happens onsite, in person, in hours rather than days.
Practice Principles
I. Operations first
Every finding, every control, every deliverable is measured against a single question: does this make the operation safer and more available? Security that compromises uptime is not security — it is a different kind of outage.
II. Service, not software
We do not sell you a platform you then have to staff, integrate, and maintain. We engage as a dedicated practice, execute the work alongside your team, and stand behind the outcome — measured in business terms, not dashboard terms.
III. Transfer over dependence
A security engagement that makes your team more dependent on an outside consultant has failed. Every engagement is structured to transfer knowledge, playbooks, and operational runbooks to the people who have to run the facility on the Tuesday after we leave.
IV. Regional commitment
Our consultants live within driving distance of the facilities they defend. Regional focus is not a tagline — it is an operational commitment that translates into same-day conversations, next-day onsite presence, and deep familiarity with the infrastructure that defines this region.
Our Approach
Every engagement follows the same four-phase arc. Scoped to your facility, measured against your operational constraints, and delivered by a dedicated team.
Weeks 1–2
We walk the floor. We read the runbooks. We interview the operators. We map the OT network, the physical envelope, the dependencies, and the constraints — before we propose a single control. This phase grounds everything that follows in your actual operation.
Weeks 2–6
The technical work — network reviews, segmentation analysis, physical security evaluation, safety-aware adversary emulation. Findings are prioritized by business impact (hours of potential downtime, safety exposure, compliance findings), not by generic CVSS.
Weeks 6–14
We implement. Architecture redesigns, policy changes, physical control upgrades, documentation, and auditor-ready evidence collection. We execute the work alongside your team rather than handing off a report and walking away.
Ongoing
We train the team that runs the facility. We document the playbooks. We leave behind capability. And we remain on retainer for the events, incidents, and audits that inevitably follow — as a partner, not a dependency.
The Practice
Cascadia OT Security is a specialized consulting practice focused on the OT and ICS environments that run data centers and heavy manufacturing. We are a sister practice to MSP Penetration Testing, applying the same offensive-first, service-led approach to industrial environments.
Approach
We do not resell platforms. We assess, segment, test, and advise — and when a tool is the right fit for your environment, we tell you which one and why, with no commission shaping the recommendation.
Focus
Data center operational resilience, Purdue-aligned segmentation, OT penetration testing, physical security (cameras, RFID, access controls), and the physical / OT scopes of SOC 2 and PCI DSS.
Region
We serve data centers along the Columbia River corridor, manufacturers across the Willamette Valley, and utilities throughout the region — where most national consultancies fly in, we are already here.
Careers
We are building a practice of operators, red teamers, physical security specialists, and compliance engineers who want to work on real industrial environments — not dashboards. If that describes you, we would like to hear from you.
Open Roles
No roles are open today. We are building the practice intentionally — if you work in OT security, ICS penetration testing, physical security assessment, or compliance readiness for industrial environments, introduce yourself and we will keep you in mind as we grow.
Engineers, assessors, and operators at all levels welcome.
Research & Publications
Whitepaper
Why operators-first consulting beats software-first platforms for industrial environments — and how to structure an engagement that gets you defensible architecture, not dashboards.
Scenario Playbook
A 14-week reference plan for moving a hyperscale Building Management System off a flat corporate network onto a segmented, monitored OT enclave — without downtime.
Scenario Playbook
How we would walk a mid-sized food processor from initial detection through production recovery after a ransomware event that pivots from IT into OT historian servers.
Blog
Our working notes on OT segmentation, ICS protocols, physical security, compliance scope, integrator risk, and the Pacific Northwest industrial environment specifically.