Rick Kaun, Rockwell Automation
From Manufacturing Tomorrow by Ohio Manufacturing Institute
June 8, 2026 · 18 min
About this episode
Rick Kaun discusses the importance of cybersecurity in industrial operations and the vulnerabilities faced by manufacturers.
Manufacturers are connecting more of their plant floors to enterprise systems and the internet — and in doing so, they’re opening doors they may not know how to close. Today’s guest has spent more than two decades at the intersection of industrial operations and cybersecurity, and he has seen what happens when those doors stay open. Rick Kaun is the Global Director of Cybersecurity Services at Rockwell Automation, one of the world’s largest industrial automation companies, headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At Rockwell, Rick leads the SecureOT practice — a unified suite of professional and managed security services designed to protect the complex, aging, and highly regulated systems that keep factories running. Before joining Rockwell, he served as VP of Solutions at Verve Industrial Protection and as Global Business Manager for Industrial IT Solutions at Honeywell Process Solutions. Today we’re talking about why operational technology security is fundamentally different from protecting your office network, what makes patchwork plant floor environments so vulnerable, and what small and mid-sized manufacturers can actually do about it — even without a…
People in this episode
Guest: Rick Kaun
Topics covered
- OT cybersecurity
- industrial automation
- IT/OT convergence
- ransomware
- manufacturing security
Keywords
- OT cybersecurity
- industrial automation
- IT/OT convergence
- ransomware
- manufacturing security
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Rockwell Automation, Verve Industrial Protection, Honeywell Process Solutions
Places: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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