Industrial cybersecurity programs fail more often at the human layer than the technical one. Operators resist. Engineers push back. Executives don't act. Security teams with the right tools, the right architecture, and the right recommendations still find themselves stalled, ignored, or working around the very people they're trying to protect.
In this talk, Peter Jackson draws on field experience across OT environments in APAC and North America to examine why trust breaks down between security and operations, and what emotionally intelligent practitioners do differently. Grounded in research from Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss, and translated directly into industrial contexts, this session explores the non-technical skills that determine whether a security program gains traction or creates resistance.
Peter covers how high-performing OT practitioners read operational cultures, communicate risk without triggering defensiveness, influence without formal authority, and stay sharp under the pressure of incidents and executive scrutiny. This is not a soft-skills talk. It is a field guide to the human dynamics that sit underneath every OT security program, and that no tool, framework, or compliance mandate will ever address.
Practitioners at any level will leave with practical language, reframes, and situational techniques they can apply the next day.
