Securing Critical OT Infrastructure for a Leading Saudi Oil & Gas Operator

A leading Oil & Gas operator in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province engaged Reliable Company to assess the security posture of its operational technology (OT) environment — the industrial control systems and SCADA infrastructure governing critical production processes.

Given the sensitivity of the environment, the engagement was scoped with strict operational safety constraints: no assessment activity could risk disrupting live production systems. Our team combined passive network reconnaissance, architecture review, and controlled testing methodologies suited to ICS/SCADA environments, where traditional IT penetration testing techniques can be unsafe to apply directly.

The assessment covered network segmentation between IT and OT zones, remote access pathways into the control environment, legacy protocol exposure, and third-party vendor access points — a common but frequently overlooked risk vector in industrial environments.

Findings revealed several high-impact gaps, including insufficient IT/OT network segmentation, unmonitored remote access channels used by equipment vendors, and legacy systems running outdated firmware with known vulnerabilities. Each finding was mapped to potential operational impact, not just technical severity — a distinction that matters in environments where a security incident can translate directly into safety or production risk.

Reliable Company delivered a prioritized remediation roadmap aligned with NCA's Essential Cybersecurity Controls and international ICS security standards (IEC 62443), enabling the client's engineering and security teams to address the highest-risk gaps first without disrupting ongoing operations. A subsequent retest confirmed closure of all critical and high findings.