Amateur threat actors have been able to compromise critical infrastructure like industrial control systems (ICS) and other operational technology (OT) assets more often lately. Compromises of exposed OT assets rose over the past 18 months, according to threat researchers at Mandiant, with attackers using readily-available tools and common techniques to gain access to the systems. Attackers can get into those because they’re often connected to the internet without authentication and visible via connected-device search engines, like Shodan.