When a production line stops, the financial damage is immediate — and the window to respond safely is narrower than most security teams realize. Rob Demain, CEO and Founder of e2e-assure, joins this Brand Highlight to explain why OT security demands a fundamentally different mindset than IT, and what organizations can do about it.

Operational technology runs the infrastructure that keeps the world moving — manufacturing floors, power grids, air traffic control systems. Rob Demain founded e2e-assure in 2013 and has spent the past seven years narrowing its focus to one discipline: SOC and MDR services. He calls it "specificity" — the principle that doing one thing with precision delivers better outcomes than spreading resources thin.

In IT security, the primary concern is data. In OT, the stakes are entirely different. Downtime is the real threat. For a manufacturing business, minutes of halted production translate directly into significant financial loss. That distinction changes everything about how security teams must respond. The "safety first" rule in OT means responders sometimes have to run alongside a threat rather than immediately neutralize it — because disconnecting systems could halt the production line entirely.

The most common attack path into OT environments runs through IT: adversaries compromise IT first, then move laterally into OT systems. Supply chain risk is the second major vector. Firmware updates, software patches, and third-party management systems all represent potential entry points. Detection takes longer too — OT systems often lack the endpoint tools that trigger fast alerts, leaving threats to surface as subtle pattern deviations over extended periods.

This is a Brand Highlight — a short introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight

GUEST
Rob Demain, CEO & Founder, e2e-assure
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/rob-demain-01733468

RESOURCES
e2e-assure website: https://e2e-assure.com
OT Downtime and Remediation Gaps Research: https://e2e-assure.com

Are you interested in telling your story?
Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full
Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight
Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

⬥EPISODE NOTES⬥

Walk the floor at RSAC Conference 2026 and you will find boxing rings, petting zoos, agentic AI everywhere, and very few answers to the question that actually matters: why should anyone trust you with their security? Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli have been watching this pattern for more than a decade -- and in this short On Location conversation, they turn the camera on themselves and on the problem they built Studio C60 to solve.

The conversation starts with a pin. A small ITSPmagazine swag item from roughly ten years ago, sitting in Sean's hand at RSAC Conference. Marco traces the thread from there -- back to 2012, back to his first time on the conference floor, back to a joke he made that has never stopped being true: they are still selling the box. The packaging has changed -- servers became SaaS, disks became dashboards -- but the instinct to lead with the product rather than the outcome has not.

Sean frames it cleanly: the messaging is the innovation. But the message only lands when it connects the technology to how teams actually use it, to what that enables the business to do, to why it matters beyond the booth. Marco extends it further: if you sound like everyone else, there is no music -- only noise. Every instrument is playing, but there is no song.

That is the gap Studio C60 exists to close. Drawing on decades of combined experience in cybersecurity, go-to-market strategy, journalism, and brand storytelling, Sean and Marco offer clients something the expo floor rarely demonstrates: the ability to articulate not just what a product does, but what it means -- for the team, for the business, for the people it serves.

The work ranges from a single consulting session to full campaign development and retainer partnerships. It starts with an honest assessment: who are you, who needs you, and what do you sound like right now? For startups especially, that starting point is where everything else begins.

What the floor at RSAC Conference 2026 makes clear, year after year, is that attention is cheap and memory is rare. The brands that last are the ones that earn it -- not with a boxing ring, but with a story worth repeating.

⬥HOSTS⬥

Sean Martin, CISSP -- Co-Founder, ITSPmagazine & Studio C60 | Host, Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast & Music Evolves Podcast | https://www.seanmartin.com/

Marco Ciappelli -- Co-Founder, ITSPmagazine & Studio C60 | Host, An Analog Brain In A Digital Age Podcast | https://www.marcociappelli.com/

⬥RESOURCES⬥

RSAC Conference 2026 -- Follow our coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac-2026-conference-san-francisco-usa-cybersecurity-event-infosec-conference-coverage

Studio C60 | https://www.studioc60.com

The Future of Cybersecurity Newsletter (Sean Martin) | https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7108625890296614912/

An Analog Brain In A Digital Age Newsletter (Marco Ciappelli) | https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7079849705156870144/

On Location | https://www.itspmagazine.com/on-location

⬥KEYWORDS⬥

sean martin, marco ciappelli, rsac conference 2026, rsac 2026, studio c60, itspmagazine, brand storytelling, cybersecurity marketing, go-to-market strategy, messaging and positioning, agentic ai, expo floor, brand differentiation, content production, cybersecurity branding, on location

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

⬥EPISODE NOTES⬥

Sean Martin had barely finished his coffee when two separate conversations with CISOs at RSAC 2026 landed the same way: security is not how the business grows, it is how the business stays out of trouble. Compliance drives the tooling. The security team does its job. The business does its job. And the two rarely meet in the middle.

That observation kicked off a quick but pointed exchange with Marco Ciappelli on the floor at RSAC, one that quickly moved from the conference center to the broader question of culture. Not just inside organizations -- but out in the world, where most people installing iPhone updates are skipping the security patch and tapping the music app feature instead.

Sean has been making this argument for years -- his original show was called The Business of Security for a reason -- and Marco brings the branding and societal lens to the same problem. What happens when businesses treat security as a cost center rather than a brand asset? Apple made privacy a selling point. Most of the industry has not. And if the companies building and deploying security do not close that gap, the consumers and executives who should care never will.

The conversation ends with Sean hinting at a second idea brewing -- something sparked by a photograph of a bow and arrow on the streets of San Francisco. That one comes later.

⬥HOSTS⬥

Sean Martin, CISSP -- Co-Founder, ITSPmagazine & Studio C60 | Host, Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast & Music Evolves Podcast | https://www.seanmartin.com/

Marco Ciappelli -- Co-Founder, ITSPmagazine & Studio C60 | Host, An Analog Brain In A Digital Age Podcast | https://www.marcociappelli.com/

⬥RESOURCES⬥

RSAC 2026 | April 28 - May 1, 2026 | Moscone Center, San Francisco -- Follow our coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac-2026-conference-san-francisco-usa-cybersecurity-event-infosec-conference-coverage

The Future of Cybersecurity Newsletter | https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7108625890296614912/

An Analog Brain In A Digital Age Newsletter | https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7079849705156870144/

On Location | https://www.itspmagazine.com/on-location

⬥KEYWORDS⬥

sean martin, marco ciappelli, rsac 2026, rsa conference, cybersecurity business value, security culture, ciso priorities, compliance-driven security, security roi, brand and security, consumer security behavior, ai and security, security as business enabler, itspmagazine, on location

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.