Rethinking Data Movement in Oil & Gas

In his session, “Rethinking Data Movement in Oil & Gas,” Daniel Bartucci examines the growing data movement challenge created by remote operations, autonomous systems, and AI, all of which increasingly depend on operational technology data. The session explores how remote access, vendor connections, cloud platforms, and agentic AI can expand the attack surface as industrial operations become more connected. It also examines the practical application of Zero Trust at the OT boundary, including least privilege, network segmentation, controlled data transfer, and the challenges created by legacy PLCs, uptime requirements, and patching cycles. The discussion highlights the importance of trusting the data flow rather than the connection itself, including the use of hardware-enforced one-way data transfer as part of a defense-in-depth approach. Drawing on lessons from water, wastewater, power, and defense environments, the session considers how these principles can be applied across upstream, midstream, and downstream operations while supporting AI data pipelines without unnecessarily increasing cyber risk.