Your backups are useless until you’ve done this one thing

 

Manufacturers invest heavily in backup systems, yet many discover during a crisis that their recovery plan doesn’t actually work. Here’s the critical validation step most are missing.

Operational technology environments were once protected by isolation. Production lines ran on air-gapped PLCs and SCADA networks that rarely interacted with external systems. That protection no longer exists.

Smart manufacturing has connected OT to IT through remote monitoring, predictive maintenance and cloud analytics. These capabilities have delivered efficiency gains, but they have also introduced the same weaknesses that IT environments have faced for years. In 2024, ransomware groups listed 1,693 industrial organisations on leak sites. That figure represented an 87 percent year-on-year increase, and one in four cases resulted in a full shutdown.

Legacy systems are particularly vulnerable. Many cannot be patched without halting production. Others rely on outdated operating systems with limited authentication. Attackers increasingly use stolen IT credentials to move into OT environments where older equipment has few built-in defences.

The consequences can be severe. When Jaguar Land Rover experienced a cyber incident in 2025, assembly lines producing more than 1,000 vehicles each day stopped. The disruption affected a supply chain supporting more than 100,000 jobs.

As IT and OT systems continue to converge, backup and recovery have become essential to operational resilience. Preventive controls reduce risk but cannot eliminate it entirely. Software updates fail. Human error occurs. A tested and reliable recovery process is what ultimately restores operations.