Where digital security meets the factory floor
Sarmad is an OT & IT security strategist based in Friedrichshafen, Germany, currently working as an Operational Technology Security Expert at ifm. His work sits at the point where the digital and physical world meet — hardening PLCs, SCADA systems, and industrial networks against modern cyber threats, while keeping compliance frameworks like IEC 62443 and NIS2 front and center.
Before moving into OT security, he built his foundation in secure software development and automated security testing — running penetration tests, wiring security tooling into CI/CD pipelines, and researching zero-day detection methods as part of EU-funded cybersecurity projects at Fraunhofer FOKUS in Berlin.
He also teaches — lecturing and supervising bachelor's theses at DHBW Friedrichshafen, passing on the same practical, standards-driven approach to security he applies in industry.
Career log
- Identify vulnerabilities and threats across Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and OT environments
- Develop and enforce tailored security policies for OT systems, ensuring compliance with industry standards
- Monitor OT networks for breaches and anomalies; design firewalls, IDS/IPS, and access-control safeguards
- Align IT and OT security strategies, architect secure designs for new OT deployments
- Lead incident investigation, forensic analysis, and third-party vendor risk assessment
- Teach applied cybersecurity concepts to undergraduate students
- Supervise bachelor's thesis projects in security-related topics
- Built methods for automated security testing and zero-day vulnerability detection during development
- Automated security testing with SQLMap, OWASP ZAP, and integrated it into Jenkins CI/CD pipelines
- Evaluated penetration testing tools for the EU-funded IoTAC project
- Ran live-feed security analysis and Rapid7 reporting on a fixed schedule
- Scripted Python integrations between Jira and Grafana for key security metrics
- Supported native Android app development involving Bluetooth peripherals