Cisco's Industrial Network Director Is Making IT/OT Convergence Actually Work

The promise of IT/OT convergence has been oversold for years, but Cisco's latest release of Industrial Network Director (IND) version 2.0 might be the first product that delivers on it in a meaningful way. The platform provides a single management interface for both IT and OT network infrastructure, with role-based access that lets OT engineers manage industrial switches without touching the corporate network, and vice versa.

The key innovation is context-aware network segmentation. IND 2.0 can automatically identify and classify industrial protocols (EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, Modbus TCP) and apply micro-segmentation policies that isolate OT traffic from IT traffic while still allowing controlled data flows for analytics. Previous generations required manual configuration of every segmentation rule.

Early deployments tell a compelling story. A Dow Chemical facility in Texas reduced its network-related unplanned downtime by 72% after deploying IND 2.0, primarily because the system detected and isolated a misconfigured IT device that was flooding the OT network with broadcast traffic — a problem that had caused intermittent PLC communication failures for months.

The challenge is adoption. Most manufacturing plants still run flat, unsegmented networks where a single misconfiguration can take down production. The 2025 Dragos Year in Review found that 78% of OT networks have no segmentation between IT and OT zones. Cisco's pitch is that IND 2.0 makes proper segmentation achievable without ripping out existing infrastructure.