Defending a Digital City
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The Battle of Defending a Digital City
Running an airport leaves no room for error.
Any casualty is one too much.
An airport isn’t just terminals and runways.
It’s a city.
Police. Fire services. Operations. OT systems. IT networks.
All running 24/7. All connected. All interdependent.
DFW Airport spans 28 square miles – bigger than the island of Manhattan.
It functions as a digital city with no residents, but tens of thousands of daily users, partners, and systems that must work in lockstep.
When something breaks, the impact isn’t theoretical.
Flights stop. Baggage stalls. Passengers are stranded.
And the ripple effects extend far beyond the airport itself.
This episode explores what it really takes to defend a digital city where availability is mission-critical and failure has immediate, physical consequences.
What you’ll learn
- Why airports operate as digital cities with unique cyber-physical risk
- How OT security works when downtime and patching aren’t always options
- What IT/OT convergence looks like in large-scale, always-on environments
- How resilience, not perfection, defines effective airport cybersecurity
- Why future airport security depends on visibility, segmentation, and preparedness
Your cybersecurity experts
Lieuwe Jan Koning
Co-Founder and CTO
ON2IT
Eric Bowerman
Chief Information Security Officer Dallas Fort Worth International Airport
Episode details
Cybersecurity at an airport isn’t about locking everything down.
It’s about keeping planes moving, people safe, and operations running – even when systems fail.
OT environments don’t behave like traditional IT.
They can’t always be patched.
They can’t always be taken offline.
Availability often outweighs confidentiality.
That changes how security must be designed, implemented, and governed.
Airfield lights, sensors, baggage systems, flight information displays, and facilities technology all rely on connectivity.
What was once isolated is now part of a broader digital ecosystem.
This is where IT/OT convergence stops being a strategy discussion and becomes an operational reality.
Segmentation matters.
Detection matters.
But resilience matters most.
Because prevention will never be perfect.
And disruption is inevitable.
Security teams prepare through tabletop exercises, resilience testing, and real-world incident response – including large-scale industry failures beyond their control.
In this Threat Talks episode, Lieuwe-Jan Koning (Co-Founder & CTO, ON2IT) speaks with Eric Bowerman (CISO, DFW Airport) about defending critical infrastructure where IT, OT, and physical safety collide.
They discuss the role of the CISO in a 24/7 environment, how trade-offs are made under pressure, and why the future of airport security depends on resilience, visibility, and preparation – not the illusion of zero risk.
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