Operational Technology (OT) covers the systems that manage and control physical processes for example: control systems in manufacturing plants, sensors and actuators in utilities, or supervisory networks in energy distribution. In recent years, OT has converged with traditional Information Technology (IT) systems: sensors and controllers once isolated are now connected to corporate networks and cloud services. Organizations can now gain deeper visibility into their systems, optimize performance, and reduce downtime.
However, this increased connectivity also expands the attack surface. As industrial and critical infrastructure environments become more digitally integrated, they attract sophisticated cyber threats that can disrupt production, compromise safety, and cause significant financial and reputational damage.
Therefore, investing in Operational Technology (OT) resilience is no longer optional – it’s a strategic imperative. Strengthening OT security ensures business continuity, protects critical assets, and enables organizations to confidently embrace digital transformation without exposing themselves to unnecessary risks.
The Growing Threat to OT Systems
OT security is now tightly bound to regulatory compliance. As global standards such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and IEC 62443 evolve, adhering to these regulations is essential to protecting operations and reputations and avoiding fines and other penalties.
Manufacturers need to focus on two broad aims:
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- Maintaining compliance standards: Meeting compliance helps establish a clear security baseline, making it easier to identify and close gaps in your OT defenses.
- Risk reduction: Aligning with global frameworks such as ISA/IEC 62443 drives consistent best practices, lowers the risk of costly cyber incidents and leads to better collaboration between IT and OT teams.
As regulators and insurers increasingly demand proof of robust cyber resilience from manufacturers, compliance is fast becoming a budgetary and board-level concern, not only to avoid fines but also to unlock new business opportunities.
Beyond industrial or manufacturing environments, every sector that relies on OT systems from energy and utilities to transportation, healthcare, and logistics faces similar risks. When connected systems go down, the impact extends far beyond data loss; it can disrupt production, halt critical services, and endanger human safety. This is why robust backup and recovery strategies are essential to OT resilience. Unlike traditional IT systems, downtime in OT environments can mean halted production lines, equipment damage, or even safety hazards. Having secure, immutable, and regularly tested backups ensures that operations can be restored quickly, minimizing financial and operational impact after an incident.
Backup and recovery are not just technical safeguards they are core components of business continuity. In today’s threat landscape, where ransomware and system outages can strike at any moment, organizations that invest in resilient recovery planning gain a critical advantage: the ability to recover fast, maintain trust, and keep the business running.
Why Now Is the Time to Act
Threat actors have matured. They no longer only attack IT endpoints they now probe OT systems, supply chains, and service provider ecosystems. Reports highlight that AI-driven attacks, “island-hopping” via MSPs (Managed Service Providers) and attacks on OT backup systems are on the rise. This means OT environments that were once offline or “air-gapped” may no longer be safe.
Industrial operators face growing regulation and expectations around cybersecurity and resilience. Even though not all data referenced is from 2025, it’s clear that OT security is now a board-level concern: one industry analysis noted that 95% of organizations listed OT cybersecurity as a board agenda item in its most recent cycle. Whether directly from the cited source or inferred, the trend is unmistakable: boards are paying attention.
The cost of an OT outage is enormous. Traditional estimates in manufacturing point to hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour; while newer vendor discussions emphasize that backup and recovery solutions that prevent downtime without halting operations (i.e., without scheduled downtime for installation) can dramatically reduce costs. The ROI for resilience is becoming easier to justify prevention and rapid recovery cost far less than lost output, regulatory penalties or reputational damage.
Building OT Resilience: Best Practices in Detail
Based on the insights from the vendor’s public content (analysis of OT-resilience solutions), here are detailed practices you should incorporate:
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- Use unified agents that handle both OT system backup and cybersecurity (malware/EDR) for legacy OSs in OT.
- Example feature: an agent that backs up HMI, SCADA, historian and I/O servers and scans backups for vulnerabilities before restoring.
- This helps ensure that when you restore you’re not reintroducing an infected system.
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- A key benefit: backups that can run without halting OT operations (critical in production settings).
- Keep a backup architecture that supports image-level backups of OT systems while they operate, so maintenance windows don’t become risk windows.
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- A central dashboard streams metadata from OT systems to a warehouse, enabling analytics, incident response, and compliance reporting.
- For instance: vulnerability assessments, patch tracking and hardware/software inventories for OT systems, all from one platform, is recommended.
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- The goal: restore OT systems fast. Even non-IT staff should be able to execute recovery. This is vital in remote or air-gapped sites.
- Example: after a ransomware incident, a manufacturing site restored production within hours because their backup-and-recovery solution was pre-configured for OT operations.
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- Backups should reside on a variety of media: on-premises NAS/SAN, private and public cloud, offsite vaults.
- Use immutability and air-gap where possible to protect backup copies from being encrypted or tampered with by ransomware.
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- With OT and IT lines blurring, governance is critical. Assign clear responsibility (e.g., the CISO) and ensure communication between IT and operations teams.
- Ensure OT systems are included in the cyber-resilience plans just like IT networks: they must follow policies like segmentation, authentication, monitoring.
Conclusion: Resilience Is Business Continuity
Ultimately, the ROI of resilience is clear: proactive protection and fast recovery cost far less than lost productivity, legal exposure, or reputational harm. The time to act is not after an incident – it’s now. In the digital-physical world of OT, resilience is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s essential. The convergence of IT and OT, the rise of sophisticated threats, and increasing regulatory and economic pressure mean that operational technology resilience equals business resilience.
If your organization is still treating OT systems as “just the machines” rather than full-fledged digital assets, now is the time to act. Build backup, protection, recovery and governance into your OT strategy and turn risk into reliability.
Secure Your Industrial Future
At ITM, we help businesses in manufacturing, energy and utilities design OT resilience strategies that include backup, cybersecurity, rapid recovery and governance.
Protect your operations. Enhance your resilience.
