Which metric pair is commonly used to assess detection and resolution speed in OT cybersecurity?

Which metric pair is commonly used to assess detection and resolution speed in OT cybersecurity?

• A. Total number of devices.
• B. Average time to patch per system.
• C. Mean time to detect and mean time to resolve.
• D. Annual security budget.

Answer: (C)

In OT cybersecurity, how quickly you notice an issue and how fast you bring operations back to normal are the most direct ways to measure responsiveness. The pair that captures this is the mean time to detect and the mean time to resolve. MTTD tells you, on average, how long it takes to recognize that something is wrong after it starts. MTTR tells you, on average, how long it takes to restore normal operations after detection. Together, they show how effectively monitoring, alerts, and incident response keep critical industrial processes safe and available by reducing both dwell time and downtime. The other options don’t address speed of detection or resolution: total devices is just asset counts, not speed; time to patch focuses on remediation effort rather than how quickly issues are discovered; annual security budget is a cost measure, not a timing metric.

In OT cybersecurity, how quickly you notice an issue and how fast you bring operations back to normal are the most direct ways to measure responsiveness. The pair that captures this is the mean time to detect and the mean time to resolve. MTTD tells you, on average, how long it takes to recognize that something is wrong after it starts. MTTR tells you, on average, how long it takes to restore normal operations after detection. Together, they show how effectively monitoring, alerts, and incident response keep critical industrial processes safe and available by reducing both dwell time and downtime.

The other options don’t address speed of detection or resolution: total devices is just asset counts, not speed; time to patch focuses on remediation effort rather than how quickly issues are discovered; annual security budget is a cost measure, not a timing metric.