Hitachi Cyber moves to address CISO needs for resilient security across OT, IoT, and IT

At Hitachi Cyber Summit 2026, the firm articulated its efforts to go all in on securing the convergence of IT and OT (operational technologies) across banking and financial services, utilities, retail, and supply chain and logistics. As OT adoption and IoT integration increase, the attack surface expands. Hitachi Cyber argues it can offer CISOs best-in-class operational assurance for firms that demand integration across devices, systems, processes, and people. Hitachi Cyber Chief Revenue Officer Matt Castonguay shared, “Cyber risk is now indistinguishable from operational risk.”

HFS believes that Hitachi’s boldest move is its repositioning from “an integrator of security solutions” to a trusted, orchestrating “partner for resilient business operations,” helping clients tackle OT/IoT security where traditional point solutions struggle to meet enterprise-scale requirements. CISOs must ask if Hitachi is selling a thesis, or can it prove it has fully operationalized its services and solutions across a messy multi-vendor ecosystem?

For the CISO’s team, Hitachi Cyber is investing in solving security from an operations standpoint and leveraging its knowledge and capabilities across OT, IoT, and IT. At the event, Hitachi Cyber articulated its frameworks to help security and business teams address security needs across infrastructure, scaling, and ROI while bringing in partners to deliver a playbook for business outcomes and resiliency.

CISOs owe the business a reliable operating infrastructure

CISOs increasingly need a reliable cyber operating layer that scales response and blends human expertise with AI agents and deep process automation under strict governance policies. This infrastructure must be able to dynamically adapt to a firm’s changing risk profile, especially as its reliance on OT and IoT creates a large attack surface in its daily operations. For Hitachi, this begins with application reliability and the ability to design, develop, and manage agents.

Its solution is the Hitachi Application Reliability Center (HARC). Hitachi Cyber adds modular, governed agent development and management for autonomous AI systems operating in IT, IoT, and OT contexts. This system+agent solution aligns with the promise of “defending the AI investment,” comprising secure AI operations, anomaly detection, and threat hunting while reducing toil and improving cycle time in security workflows. Its Unified Agentic Operating Framework is positioned to help a CISO deploy, manage, and optimize their security and resiliency fabrics.

While Hitachi Cyber works independently from Hitachi’s other operations, HARC builds on its steadfast data center technologies. While it’s not required that a client invest in HARC, for companies wanting a one-stop shop, it’s nice to know they have the capabilities and products available if required.

CISOs need partners that can span sites with repeatable patterns

CISOs at the event repeatedly indicated they are looking for a partner that can offer repeatable security patterns across plants, fleets, and regions without custom re-architecture at every site. Hitachi Cyber is addressing this with its “Device to DevOps” message. Developing a security framework for OT/IoT security is not simply about monitoring; it’s about linking device signals to engineering practices and reliability disciplines, so vulnerabilities don’t recur across the software and configuration lifecycle.

Hitachi augmented its offering with partnerships, several of which were at the event:

• StandardFusion (via Hitachi Managed GRC) helps convert ROI from abstract “risk reduction” into real reductions in audit burden and evidence chaos, including automating controls mapping, evidence capture, and ongoing reporting. That makes ROI legible to company boards and executives because it quantifies cost reduction and governance improvement.
• Nozomi Networks strengthens its ROI story by contributing to Hitachi’s core wheelhouse in operational technologies. Nozomi demonstrated how it adds quantifiable, explainable OT visibility and risk prioritization.
• Google Cloud strengthens the modernization path (data, analytics, AI security use cases) and helps prevent readiness from becoming a never-ending “on-prem OT exception list.”

CISOs need an OT and IoT playbook more than they need inspiration

What CISOs need is a practical cyber operating model spanning IT, OT, and IoT+AI, with clear ownership, runbooks, and escalation paths that don’t create functional SOCs that compete with the enterprise SOC.

To really engage the CISO, HFS believes Hitachi Cyber can be more explicit about who does what, when. A clear playbook with actions, solutions, and outcomes would bolster its go-to-market message, for example:

• Day 1: Minimum telemetry, asset discovery, segmentation decisions, safety constraints
• Day 30: Incident runbooks, escalation paths, change control alignment, evidence capture
• Day 180: Repeatable rollout, supplier coordination, tabletop outcomes, compliance routines

CISOs don’t need inspiration. They need a blueprint that survives operational friction.

What Hitachi Cyber gets right, and where CISOs need it to differentiate

Hitachi Cyber acknowledges that ROI doesn’t come from “AI in the Security Operations Center (SOC)” theater; rather, it arises from operationalizing security into scalable readiness, response, and governance loops, and from the speed at which AI-assisted systems can recognize and act.

Hitachi’s narrative acknowledges ROI pain, but it still positions its offerings as a reusable, outcomes-based playbook rather than a concept. The CISO needs Hitachi Cyber to provide clear examples of how its solutions show ROI across infrastructure (HARC), risk and cost mitigation (audit trails), and scale (hybrid cloud cyber solutions).

The Bottom Line: Proving ROI can be hard; CISOs must tie it to uptime, auditability, and operational readiness.

Hitachi aims to be a keystone for helping its customers build, deploy, and manage a resilient cybersecurity operating model. While it brings strong IT, OT, and IoT capabilities, along with engineering and agentic AI, it is enlisting closely aligned partners to help its clients quantify outcomes, scale as needs arise, and innovate as new physical AI and operational technologies emerge.