For enterprise teams running AI in production or operating critical infrastructure. Cybersecurity since before AI was an attack surface.
is being deployed faster than it is being secured.
Industrial systems are being targeted faster than they are being hardened.
Both surfaces need senior practitioners now.
Beyond Bytes was founded in 2020 by security leaders whose careers span enterprise IT, cloud architecture, and critical infrastructure. We have built two specialty practices on that foundation: AI security and ICS/OT defense. Our clients are private-sector operators in energy, transportation, manufacturing, and the businesses that depend on them. These are sectors where a quiet compromise has consequences beyond data.
The firm is five years old. The work behind it is more than two decades.
Our practitioners spent the years before AI security was a category running cybersecurity programs at scale. We led IT modernization for federal agencies, designed cloud architectures for enterprises moving off legacy infrastructure, ran incident response in environments where the consequences were measured in headlines, and assessed industrial control systems before "OT security" had a name. That work taught us how attackers think, how defenders fail, and how security programs survive contact with operational reality.
We chose to build Beyond Bytes as a specialized firm focused on two domains because those domains are where senior security work creates the most value today. AI security is a new field where the practitioner base has not caught up to the deployment pace. ICS and OT security has always been undersupplied with specialists who understand both control systems and adversarial tradecraft. Both demand judgment that does not come from a checklist.
AI security extends the foundations our practitioners have spent careers on: network security, identity, application security, adversarial thinking. The threat models that matter (prompt injection, retrieval poisoning, agent tool abuse, training-data leakage) build on top of that foundation rather than replacing it. We treat AI as the specialization, with depth in the security fundamentals it rests on.
Industrial environments do not behave like enterprise IT. Patching is constrained, vendors gate-keep change, and a misplaced scan can crash a PLC. We design assessments that respect operational reality. We deliver remediation that compensates where it cannot patch, segments where it cannot replace, and monitors where it cannot prevent.
AI in production introduces failure modes that need their own testing approach. Prompt injection that exfiltrates system instructions. Models that leak training data under adversarial prompting. Agent tool-use that can be manipulated into unauthorized actions. These risks sit alongside traditional application threats and call for testing built around the AI architecture itself.
AI security is a fast-evolving discipline that benefits from blending two foundations: rigorous adversarial security practice and a deep understanding of how AI systems behave in production. Our practitioners spent the last two decades defending networks, running incident response, and thinking adversarially. We brought that foundation to AI as a deliberate specialization, and the depth we bring is grounded in real engagements.
Structured attack simulations against your AI systems, mapped to OWASP LLM Top 10, MITRE ATLAS, and the threat model your deployment context implies. Prompt injection, jailbreaks, model extraction, training data leakage, retrieval poisoning, agent tool abuse, and supply chain compromise. Tested against your production architecture, not a generic chatbot.
Programs that allow your teams to deploy AI under controls your auditors and your leadership both accept. We map your AI portfolio to NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001, classify use cases by risk tier, define approval and monitoring controls, and stand up the governance body so model deployment decisions stop bottlenecking on legal review.
Security built into how your teams build, fine-tune, and deploy. Threat modeling for AI applications, secure pipeline architecture, dataset provenance, model registry hardening, and runtime safeguards. Guardrails that fail safely and log usefully.
The generic AI security testing playbook does not survive contact with your specific deployment.
Backed by sensitive documents has a different threat model than a coding assistant.
With database write access has a different threat model than a content generator.
We scope around your actual architecture rather than a checklist, and we deliver findings your engineers can act on rather than reports your compliance team files.
Industrial environments do not behave like enterprise IT. A vulnerability scanner pointed at a PLC can crash the device. An EDR agent dropped on a historian can violate vendor support contracts. A firewall rule pushed without coordination can take a process offline. The security work that matters in these environments is the work that knows the difference between a finding and a safety incident.
We assess and harden industrial control environments for energy operators, transportation systems, manufacturing facilities, and other operators of critical processes. We use passive techniques first, active testing only where the operational context allows, and we deliver findings that account for the patch windows you actually have rather than the ones a generic auditor wishes you had.
Hands-on assessments aligned to ISA/IEC 62443, NIST SP 800-82, and applicable sector standards. We assess HMIs, PLCs, SCADA, historians, engineering workstations, and the IT/OT boundary. Findings include compensating controls usable in environments where patching is slow, and crown-jewel analysis for the assets where the cost of compromise is largest.
Purdue-aligned zone and conduit design, IT/OT DMZ implementation, secure remote access for vendors and engineers, and segmentation that contains compromise rather than letting it spread laterally to safety-critical assets.
Tabletop exercises with both engineering and security leadership in the room, response plans tuned to your asset inventory, and detection engineering for industrial protocols. When an incident happens, we help you contain it without taking the process down.
The fastest way to lose credibility with a control engineer is to recommend something that would shut the plant. We design assessments that respect operational reality. We take the time to understand the process before we touch the network.
We deliver remediation that fits the environment:
where it cannot patch
where it cannot replace
where it cannot prevent
Every engagement is led by a senior practitioner who stays on it through closeout. The person scoping the work is the person doing the work. No bait-and-switch staffing.
In environments where active testing carries operational risk, we use passive techniques first. We do not introduce risk to prove a finding. We coordinate every active test with the engineers responsible for the asset.
Findings are written for engineers. Evidence is written for auditors. Executive summaries are written for the people who fund remediation. The same finding, shaped for who reads it.
We scope around your actual architecture rather than a generic checklist. If the work changes mid-engagement because the environment is not what we were told, we say so in writing before we keep going.
Five phases. Same senior practitioner from start to finish.
A scoping conversation that asks what you are protecting and what you actually have. We deliver a written scope document before any commercial commitment.
Architecture review, asset inventory, and threat model. We learn the environment before we touch it.
Passive techniques first. Active testing only where the operational context allows. Every active test is coordinated with the responsible engineer.
Three artifacts: remediation guidance for engineers, evidence for auditors, and an executive summary for the people funding the work.
Walk-through with your team, Q&A on remediation, and a six-month re-test option. We do not disappear at delivery.
Conducted structured adversarial testing of an LLM application handling regulated customer interactions. Identified prompt injection paths capable of exfiltrating system instructions and customer data, retrieval poisoning vectors against the RAG pipeline, and agent tool misuse leading to unauthorized backend actions. Delivered prioritized remediation, runtime guardrail recommendations, and detection content the client integrated into their existing SOC workflow.
Built an AI risk management program aligned to NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001. Inventoried AI use cases across the business, classified them by risk tier, defined approval and monitoring controls, and stood up the governance board. The organization now deploys generative AI under documented controls rather than ad-hoc legal review.
Assessed an industrial facility running legacy SCADA against NIST SP 800-82, ISA/IEC 62443, and applicable sector standards. Audited industrial protocols, identified critical exposures in engineering workstations and remote access paths, and designed segmentation that closed gaps without disrupting production. Reduced exploitable attack surface while preserving uptime.
Led implementation supporting Executive Order 14028 compliance across a hybrid cloud and on-premise environment. Modernized identity controls, network security, and threat monitoring. Consolidated the security toolset, reduced operating costs, and improved time to detection. Delivered against the agency's mission requirements within a compliance regime that does not forgive shortcuts.
A representative sample. We do not name clients. References available under NDA at scoping.
Zero trust architecture program supporting Executive Order 14028. Identity modernization, network security, threat monitoring consolidation across hybrid cloud and on-prem.
ICS security assessment of a generation facility. NIST SP 800-82 and ISA/IEC 62443 alignment. Segmentation design that closed remote-access gaps without disrupting production.
Adversarial assessment of a production LLM application handling regulated customer interactions. Prompt injection, RAG poisoning, agent tool misuse. Runtime guardrails delivered.
OT/IT boundary hardening across three plants. Purdue-aligned zone and conduit design, vendor remote-access program, detection engineering for industrial protocols.
AI governance program aligned to NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001. Use-case inventory, risk-tier classification, governance board stand-up.
Tabletop exercises with engineering and security leadership. Incident response plans tuned to asset inventory.
Senior practitioners read every scoping inquiry. We respond within one business day.
Tell us what you are protecting. We respond to scoping inquiries within one business day.