Between flat cybersecurity budgets and a shortage of experienced OT/IoT cybersecurity professionals, defending industrial and critical infrastructure environments presents the ideal use case for leveraging artificial intelligence (AI). That’s been the case for as long as OT/IoT cybersecurity has existed, which is why Nozomi Networks has been infusing AI throughout our platform since Day 1, more than a decade ago.
Those efforts culminate in Vantage IQ, which puts continuously refreshed AI-powered insights and remediation advice at users’ fingertips throughout the Vantage cloud management platform. It gives stakeholders instant awareness of the most critical issues in their environment. Especially for teams that are new to industrial cybersecurity or lack dedicated resources, Vantage IQ replicates the domain expertise of a seasoned OT/IoT security analyst, at a fraction of the cost.
Vantage IQ: Your OT Security Analyst in the Cloud
Vantage IQ lets security teams do more with less. It offloads the tedious tasks of reviewing, correlating and prioritizing thousands of data points to a tireless AI engine, so analysts and operators never miss a critical issue. No more sifting through the noise for the few alevrts that matter. Instead, the most relevant items are presented front and center, with actionable insights and recommended actions, continuously refreshed. For new analysts especially, it’s like having an advanced OT/IoT security expert at your side offering clear context and guidance whenever you need it.
Navigating and understanding a system with thousands of interconnected devices can be daunting for the most seasoned cybersecurity professional. How can you ensure devices are running the latest software versions and that they aren’t communicating improperly or showing any unwanted behavior? Vantage IQ continuously analyzes all alerts and categorizes them by severity (high, medium and low) and type of action required to remediate the issue.
Details about prioritized items are a click away, with clear explanations of what happened, probable cause and suggestion actions that facilitate investigation for even the newest analyst.
Lean Budgets, Scarce Resources: Why OT/IoT Cybersecurity Teams Need AI
Cybersecurity budgets worldwide aren’t keeping pace with the growing number of threats and shrinking resources to defend organizations against them. According to the 2025 Security Budget Benchmark Summary Report from IANS Research and Artico Search, average annual cybersecurity budgets grew by just 4% this year, down from about 8% in 2024. Considering that global inflation hovers between 3% and 4%, cybersecurity budgets are basically flat.
The implications for cyber defenders of industrial and critical infrastructure environments are even more concerning:
- Budget allocation: CISOs have increasingly assumed responsibility for OT/IoT cybersecurity as part of enterprise risk management. According to the SANS 2025 ICS/OT Cybersecurity Budget Survey, budgets are also being folded into the enterprise IT budget, with little of the pie dedicated specifically to OT cybersecurity.
- Resource allocation: OT/IoT cybersecurity demands specialized knowledge and techniques. Yet also according to this year’s SANS budget survey, on average respondents split their time between IT and ICS/OT security, with only 9% entirely dedicated to the latter.
- Experience gap: The OT/IoT cybersecurity talent pool is too small and too green. According to an earlier SANS report, over half of the workforce has five years of experience or less. While the influx of talent is positive, it will take years for them to acquire the deep, domain-specific experience needed to understand complex OT environments, given their high-stakes physical consequences and fragile legacy systems that are insecure by design.
As Me Anything: Your Custom AI Assistant for OT
The Nozomi Networks R&D and research labs teams have been building AI into our platform and training our AI engine in-house for nearly 13 years. We use a variety of AI methodologies, choosing the right tool (ML, predictive analysis, behavioral analytics, Bayesian Networks) for the task at hand (asset inventory, vulnerability management, anomaly detection, threat detection, risk management). The latest addition to that arsenal is generative AI, which we call Vantage IQ Assistant.
As with all our AI, we’re not just using an API to bolt on a commercial digital assistant and large language model (LLM). It works just like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot but is trained on your environment to deliver accurate answers tailored to your needs using the Nozomi Networks LLM and AI engine, refined over more than a decade in the most challenging OT/IoT environments. Optional remediation advice is available from Mandiant Threat Intelligence.
Vantage IQ Assistant provides instant answers to complex, plain-language questions that help you close security gaps and optimize your environment. Just like any digital assistant, simply start a conversation and go from there.
Suppose you want to reduce a particular threat:
“Can you give me any recommendations to reduce this threat?”
In seconds, Vantage IQ analyzes the threat, identifies the affected assets in your environment recommendations specific actions. Again, even new security analysts unfamiliar with OT/IoT devices, networks and cybersecurity practices can easily understand the problem and solution, with further clarification a question away.
Give Security Teams the AI Tools to Keep Pace with Threat Actors
AI is everywhere, and every organization is evaluating how to harness it safely and effectively. For many companies, the goal is to stay ahead of the competition. For OT/IoT security leaders, the goal is to at least keep pace with threat actors, who are using it to launch sophisticated attacks faster than ever. Given the amount of time SOC analysts spend sifting through enormous amounts of data to identify and nullify real threats, investing in AI-powered cybersecurity tools should top the list.
