Air-Gap Assumptions and Unseen Exposure in Energy Networks

For decades, operators in the energy sector have leaned on the belief that their OT environments are “air-gapped”, which means they are isolated from the internet and IT systems, and therefore immune to most forms of remote attack. The term has become shorthand for security itself.

But air gaps, in many networks, exist in theory more than in practice. In reality, legacy assets, unmonitored interfaces, and informal data bridges often break the promise of isolation. And when those paths aren’t mapped, secured, or even identified, they become open invitations for attackers already looking for a way in.

The assumption of isolation no longer protects critical networks. In fact, it may be the most dangerous vulnerability in the system.

Invisible Exposure in Supposedly Isolated Environments

Security professionals in critical sectors, such as energy operators, regularly discover network paths and connections they didn’t know existed until they investigate an incident or conduct a comprehensive audit. What was assumed to be offline turns out to be passively reachable through lateral pathways, improperly segmented devices, or misconfigured firewall rules.

These invisible exposures often take the following forms:

• Vendor access left behind after a temporary connection for maintenance.

• Outbound telemetry channels that inadvertently allow reverse communication.

• Shared credentials or trust relationships between OT and IT zones.

• Misconfigured switches or unmanaged ports that route traffic between zones.

In high-risk sectors, the consequences are not hypothetical. Sophisticated malware families, including Industroyer2, BlackEnergy, and Volt Typhoon, have been observed exploiting precisely these weak segmentation points. Their aim is to blend into environments that they believe are isolated.

Once inside, attackers can disable protections, manipulate industrial processes, or even trigger cascading failures across physical infrastructure.

Why Energy Networks Are Particularly at Risk

Energy systems operate with long lifecycles and strict uptime requirements. The result is an ecosystem of legacy protocols, fragmented asset ownership, and critical functions that cannot tolerate interruption.

These constraints often prevent operators from implementing frequent changes or deploying modern security tooling. They also drive reliance on remote access for diagnostics, software updates, or real-time performance monitoring.

Over time, what begins as temporary exposure like one firewall rule or one vendor session becomes persistent architecture. In many facilities, no one person can account for all the potential communication paths. And no centralized map exists.

This is where air-gap assumptions fail. A system is not secure because it feels isolated. It is secure only when every inbound and outbound path is identified, governed, and enforced at the physical and protocol layers.

What Enforced Isolation Actually Looks Like

To close the gap between theory and practice, energy operators must stop depending on abstract separation and begin designing for measurable isolation. This requires a shift in how segmentation is understood and implemented.

Effective OT network isolation in today’s environment involves:

• One-way data transfer for telemetry and logs, enforced by hardware, not policy.

• Strictly governed bidirectional communication, enabled only where necessary and filtered by protocol and content.

• Air-gap-compatible file exchange, where all files on a removable media device is scanned, sanitized, and controlled before entering the OT domain.

• Network visibility and auditing, to ensure all data paths, devices, and flows are accounted for and reviewed.

This approach does not mean disconnecting critical systems entirely. It means controlling how data moves: who can send it, how it is validated, and where it is allowed to land. That’s not a theoretical air gap. That’s a real, testable security boundary.

Isolation That Protects Without Disruption

Operators in the energy sector are under pressure to modernize and comply with increasingly strict regulations, all the while maintaining service continuity, meeting operational KPIs, and avoiding unnecessary downtime. The solution isn’t to give up on isolation.

True isolation enables secure exports of monitoring data, controlled software updates, and safe third-party access, without creating lateral exposure. It eliminates the need to choose between security and usability.

DataFlowX solutions are built for this exact challenge. Whether you need one-way transfer, segmented two-way communication, or physically hardened upload workflows, our solutions give you the control and enforcement required to turn isolation from an assumption into a guarantee.

DataDiodeX: Enforced One-Way Communication

DataDiodeX provides hardware-enforced one-way data transfer enabled by data diodes, allowing telemetry and logs to exit the OT environment without creating any path back in. This guarantees that outbound channels that are often overlooked in energy systems do not become backdoors. It replaces the assumption of isolation with a verifiable control point.

DataBrokerX: Secure Cross-Domain Exchange

When bidirectional communication is necessary, DataBrokerX enables it under strict policy control using data diodes. Protocol filtering, content validation, and Zero Trust enforcement ensure that only verified data enters or leaves segmented zones. This allows critical operations like vendor updates or secure file sync to proceed without collapsing the security boundary.

Contact our expert team today to learn how you can enforce security by design instead of relying on trust.