If you walk onto a plant floor today and observe carefully, you’ll see something striking: operations run on data just as much as they depend on steel and electricity. In manufacturing, utilities and refining, OT systems such as control systems, HMIs, historians and operator workstations support day-to-day operations and safety-critical processes.
Many operational technology (OT) systems still run on legacy platforms that were not designed for modern backup or cybersecurity requirements. When they fail, production stops and safety risks surge.
The recent Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack, which halted production for weeks and cost over £50 million weekly, shows exactly how devastating these failures can be.
That risk is only growing. By 2030, according to forecasts by global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, manufacturing is expected to generate 4.4 zettabytes of data each year, much of which directly affects uptime, product quality and regulatory compliance.
To prepare for these realities, organizations need to confront the hard parts of OT backup head-on and understand how to protect these systems, recover them safely, and align IT and OT to keep industrial operations running smoothly without compromise.
In OT, a small backup-related mistake can halt production, impact physical equipment, and compromise safety. This creates distinct challenges organizations must address in any industrial backup strategy.
In many plants, the first challenge shows up the moment you log in and see a control server running Windows XP or a workstation tied to a Linux 2 kernel, because those environments exist to keep legacy control software alive.
Complicating things further, the simple act of installing a backup agent or even taking a live system snapshot can disrupt or crash legacy OPC (Open Platform Communications) interfaces and may invalidate licensing (especially those tied to MAC address or disk serial number).
OT networks are often segmented, firewalled, or fully air-gapped in accordance with security frameworks like the Purdue Model and IEC 62443 standard.
In highly regulated sites such as nuclear, defense and pharmaceutical manufacturing, backups may require sealed USD drives and witnessed transfers. This limited connectivity makes centralizing or exporting backups difficult, which complicates OT data resilience.
OT systems are typically customized to specific equipment, so recovery depends on exact configurations: hardware drivers, licenses, and network settings. Also, HMIs and historians use custom scripts tied directly to equipment, with configuration scattered across registries, databases, and config files.
If you only have file-level backups, you miss dependencies like DCOM settings or vendor-specific configs, leading to a restored system that cannot communicate with equipment.
In OT environments, restore failures — like restoring a wrong turbine configuration that exceeds safe limits — can also cause equipment damage or safety hazards aside from downtime.
Since testing backups can require taking production systems offline, many OT backups are never fully validated, leaving serious uncertainty about whether systems can be safely and reliably recovered in an emergency.
OT equipment, such as blast furnaces, steam turbines, and paper machines, often runs continuously for months or years, with only annual shutdowns for patching and testing. With almost no maintenance windows, even routine backup activities risk disrupting live production.
In addition to these challenges, ransomware creates unique risks in OT because an attack affects more than data. It can disrupt production, break operator visibility, corrupt control logic, and create unsafe conditions.
With that in mind, here are some key considerations for mitigating ransomware risks and how solid backups can move the needle.
Ransomware attacks often compromise supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) servers, engineering workstations, and backups simultaneously when they share networks or credentials. This leaves sites unable to recover. Fully isolating backups using separate networks and credentials prevents attackers from destroying both operations and recovery systems.
In the power industry, for example, encrypted turbine configurations or substation relay settings can force emergency shutdowns or leave protection systems in an unknown state. Additionally, losing historian data or HMI visibility blinds operators to temperature, pressure and load trends that can signal developing hazards.
Immutable backups prevent modification even if attackers obtain admin access. Offline copies — such as air-gapped drives, vault-stored media, or one-way diode transfers — provide a final layer of protection that ransomware cannot reach.
Restoring SCADA servers, distributed control systems (DCS), and HMI systems requires defined sequencing, calibration checks, safety validations, and coordination with operations. These procedures must be created in advance because a ransomware incident in progress is the absolute worst time to determine how to safely restore critical systems.
In OT, backups for SCADA, historians, DCS and HMI systems do more than save files. They keep production running, protect equipment, and support safety. By using these strategies, you can recover quickly without causing extra downtime.
PC-based OT platforms are unique with drivers, vendor tools, licenses, and network settings that are difficult to recreate from scratch. With disk imaging, you can capture the entire system state, which enables you to restore a workstation in minutes.
Keep in mind that hardware-tied licenses may require reactivation, but even so, images are still far faster than manual rebuilds. For OT data resilience, full image backups are the foundation.
Reserve full system imaging for planned maintenance events, like shutdowns and firmware updates, instead of backing up daily.
For data-level backups (like historian databases or PLC programs), run them during low activity periods. In true 24/7 operations, use lightweight configuration exports that can be executed safely anytime.
Backups must be kept off-site to ensure their safety in case of a site-wide incident, such as fire, flood, or ransomware attack on the production site. To protect data, use encrypted removable media stored in secure vaults for air-gapped plants.
For connected OT environments, use one-way data diodes, isolated backup networks or tightly controlled demilitarized zones (DMZ) staging, and don’t allow direct network paths from production OT to external storage.
Always keep at least one copy of your data physically separate from everything else, rotated to meet RTO/RPO and regulatory requirements.
Cloud backups are often unsuitable due to regulations (e.g., NERC CIP, NRC, and ITAR), data sovereignty requirements, and the increased attack surface from internet connectivity. So, if you’re considering moving to the cloud, conduct a thorough risk and compliance assessment before migrating.
In OT environments, testing is difficult, which is why it often gets skipped. At minimum, validate image integrity, boot the image in a sandbox, and document the steps. Even basic testing increases confidence that recovery will work when production depends on it.
In many plants, IT and OT teams operate independently, with limited shared visibility into backup ownership, recovery procedures, and validation responsibilities. As a result, critical systems such as SCADA servers, HMIs, and historians may be backed up inconsistently, tested infrequently, or restored without full awareness of operational dependencies. Bridging that gap requires shared capabilities that let both teams coordinate safely. Follow these steps to do that.
Assign OT/engineering to manage backups with IT providing infrastructure support. Document procedures for both teams, including air-gapped system backups using manual media transfer and witness verification.
IT teams can provide backup best practices and infrastructure while OT teams control timing, scope, and restoration. Regular coordination ensures awareness of dependencies while keeping backup data physically separated.
Tools like Acronis enable hybrid visibility, letting teams monitor and protect production-floor and corporate workloads without compromising OT isolation.
Multi-site organizations can document standard backup policies (retention periods, offsite storage requirements, testing frequencies) that each site implements locally based on its maintenance windows and operational constraints. Policy templates like these will help reduce inconsistencies without requiring centralized automation that would violate air gaps.
A critical challenge is knowing what systems need backup protection. Maintain joint inventories of SCADA servers, HMIs, historians, engineering workstations and operator terminals. This can be done through periodic audits during maintenance windows rather than live integration, which would require network connectivity.
During ransomware or major system failures, a coordinated IT-OT response is important. For this reason, define communication channels, escalation steps, and restoration priorities, and ensure both teams understand OT requirements such as commissioning processes and safety standards.
Industrial and OT environments cannot afford downtime. This is where Acronis supports industrial data resilience by enabling secure backup and recovery for OT systems, including environments with legacy platforms and limited connectivity. Here’s how this works in an industrial setting.
Acronis Cyber Protect is built for real industrial sites like manufacturing plants, power stations, and oil and gas facilities, which usually run a mix of old and new systems, including legacy operating systems that simply cannot be upgraded without risk to the functionality and stability of the OT applications running on them. Acronis supports these systems so teams can protect stable equipment instead of replacing it just to satisfy backup requirements.
To see what this looks like in the real world, read our Sasol case study. They operate complex industrial facilities where even short outages carry real consequences. Sasol needed a dependable way to back up plant systems across physical and virtual environments without disrupting operations.
Using Acronis, they improved plant stability and business continuity, adding the ability to restore critical workloads even when the underlying hardware changed.
Many OT environments are air-gapped or tightly controlled for security. Acronis supports backups in these isolated environments using a locally deployed backup console, without requiring constant network access or major architecture changes. With Acronis, organizations can protect critical systems while keeping security boundaries intact.
With the help of Acronis Cyber Protect’s flexible backup options, OT teams can go with full system image backups, file-level backups, or incremental backups. It really just depends on how fast your data changes and how quickly you need it back.
This flexibility helped Tata Steel modernize its backup operations. The company moved away from manual and inconsistent backup processes and adopted Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud instead.
The result? They increased protected workloads by 50 times and significantly improved recovery times. Automation reduced human error, and the IT team gained confidence that systems could be restored when needed.
Resilience isn’t just about storing data somewhere safe and hoping for the best. It’s also about getting systems back online quickly after something went wrong.
Acronis supports fast recovery through universal restore, bare metal recovery, and standby virtual machines. These tools let you restore systems to new hardware, rebuild from scratch, or restore fast after an outage. For OT environments, this means the difference between a short disruption and a full production stoppage.
Acronis integrates cybersecurity into backup operations, so you’re not just backing up malware and vulnerabilities along with your data. Backups can be scanned and remediated for malware before recovery, which reduces the risk of restoring infected systems. Also, data is protected with strong encryption, helping organizations meet strict security and compliance requirements.
What’s more, Acronis supports compliance-ready reports by keeping logs in one place and creating backup records automatically. At the same time, it offers comprehensive reporting capabilities that generate audit-ready evidence aligned with regulatory standards like HIPAA, GDPR, and NIS2, thereby making audits much easier.
For organizations with multiple plants or remote sites, there’s central visibility through a single dashboard. Teams can monitor backup statuses, recovery readiness, and system health across locations, making it easier to spot issues early and respond before they impact operations.
If a SCADA server, historian, or HMI goes down, the impact is immediate, affecting production, safety, and even regulatory compliance.
This makes a solid OT backup plan important.
A robust OT backup plan requires IT and OT teams working together, coordinating procedures, understanding dependencies, and making sure recovery is fast and reliable.
Modern platforms such as Acronis simplify backup while keeping data secure. Its solutions fit both legacy and modern setups, trigger automatic backups, and help keep you compliant.
When properly configured, Acronis reduces downtime, minimizes threats and frees up teams to manage daily tasks instead of handling emergencies.
About Acronis
A Swiss company founded in Singapore in 2003, Acronis has 15 offices worldwide and employees in 50+ countries. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is available in 26 languages in 150 countries and is used by over 21,000 service providers to protect over 750,000 businesses.
