New International IT-OT Standard has a Secora Connection.

The International Society of Automation has released the 2025 edition of ANSI/ISA-95.00.01, marking a pivotal moment for industrial data integration. What makes this particularly interesting is how it formalises practices that researchers like Dr. Ana Kuusk – head of the Secora Garage, our industrial AI lab – have been validating and refining for over a decade.

The challenge is familiar to anyone working in industrial settings: your most valuable operational data lives in two separate worlds. Operational technology generates continuous streams of asset data – temperature readings, vibration patterns, production metrics flowing directly from equipment. Meanwhile, traditional IT systems house business data in platforms like SAP and enterprise databases that CIOs understand well.

Getting these systems to communicate effectively begins with what Kuusk calls a ‘Data Safari’ – systematically hunting down data sources and building the pipelines that connect OT and IT domains. It's foundational work that must happen before any digital twin, Power BI dashboard, or analytics platform can deliver meaningful insights.

Dr Ana Kuusk

Kuusk's involvement began in 2011 when she tackled a PhD project to validate Gartner's theoretical OT-IT convergence framework. The consulting giant had coined compelling terminology around this integration, but lacked empirical evidence. Her research – with assistance from Engineers Australia, the Australian Computer Society, The Asset Institute, and UniSA – provided that missing foundation, eventually feeding back into Gartner's own models and industry guidance.

The updated ISA-95 standard essentially codifies these proven information and operational technology practices into international guidelines, further bridging Engineering and CIO data convergence and industrial automation domains. For CIOs increasingly responsible for operational technology but lacking engineering domain expertise, it provides structured approaches to data integration that industrial practitioners have been developing for decades.

“It’s been a long time coming – but now it's finally an international standard," Kuusk observes. Organisations can now reference established methodologies rather than treating industrial control systems OT data integration as risky experimental territory.