Why IT and OT recovery strategies must evolve

Industrial organisations have spent the past decade connecting what were once isolated operational environments to digital platforms that promise efficiency, insight and automation. The rise of the Industrial Internet of Things has seen everything from robotic arms to water pumps and conveyor networks linked to cloud analytics and remote management tools. 

This shift has been extremely positive in terms of productivity, but it has also heightened the risks for sectors that depend on continuous operation. Those industrial systems that are now digitally enabled are exposing mission-critical operations to new forms of cyber risk, and resilience can no longer be an afterthought.

Downtime for patching or incident remediation may have been disruptive in the past, but it was generally manageable. However, today, the complexity of many OT systems means that they cannot be easily taken offline without causing financial loss, supply chain disruption or safety concerns. 

The recent incident at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) highlighted significant challenges in the manufacturing industry, particularly in terms of cybersecurity and supply chain resilience. The consequences were immediate, severe and provided a vivid reminder of how IT failures at one company can cripple OT operations across many others.

When integration expands the attack surface

The difficulty is not simply the operational impact of downtime, but the very technologies used to modernise industrial estates are creating new entry points for attackers. IIoT sensors, cloud interfaces, remote maintenance tools and digital supply chains all extend connectivity while introducing vulnerabilities. Even a misconfigured wireless controller or an unpatched PLC gateway can provide a foothold.

The European Network for Cyber Security (ENCS) recently warned that increasing interconnectivity within renewable energy assets has made substations and distributed control systems more exposed to cyber threats than ever before. In November it announced that ELES, Slovenia’s transmission system operator, has joined the network as a member, reinforcing collaborative efforts to protect Europe’s electricity grid from evolving cyber threats.

The move came amid rising pressure on Europe’s grid operators and will see them share collaborative threat intelligence, specialist training and technical expertise, strengthening their ability to detect, prevent and respond to cyber incidents targeting high-voltage networks. 

As wind turbines, EV charging points and grid edge devices are brought online, the sheer volume of digital interfaces is making it increasingly difficult to defend without a robust resilience strategy.

Why resilience must be engineered into OT environments

To minimise downtime and maintain confidence in their operations, organisations need real-time visibility across every device and protocol. They can no longer rely on perimeter tools alone, and many industrial sites face practical constraints. Whether it be old manufacturing lines that don’t support agent-based tooling, or facilities failing to accommodate new hardware without engineering change, the need for modern OT sensors is proving hugely important. 

Designed specifically for industrial environments, they provide passive, low impact monitoring that can operate even in bandwidth-restricted or safety-critical locations. By observing traffic patterns and control commands rather than relying on intrusive scanning, these sensors offer a practical route to visibility without affecting production.

Metadata collected from sensors can be streamed to a central Security Operations Centre where analysts correlate it with IT intelligence and threat models. This unified view allows threats to be spotted and contained early, often before the point they cause outages that force shutdowns. It also removes the guesswork that has traditionally accompanied IT and OT incidents, because SOC teams can trace activity across both environments in real time. 

Reducing recovery time without interruption

That said, resilience is not only about preventing attacks but about shortening recovery time when incidents do occur. By identifying suspicious behaviour at the earliest stage, SOC analysts can intervene before an attacker reaches major systems and operations. This approach prevents the situation in which an organisation must halt production to perform containment and recovery.

Addressing operational events, such as grid fluctuations, water pressure changes, and pipeline anomalies, while maintaining strong cybersecurity vigilance is critical. This means deploying sensors across diverse protocols, integrating them with SOC processes and ensuring that both IT and OT teams have access to the same intelligence. It also means shifting from a mindset of episodic incident response to one of continuous detection, containment and recovery.

The role of compliance

CNI organisations also require compliance with multiple cybersecurity regulations. A resilient strategy ensures adherence to these standards, avoiding legal repercussions. 

NIS2, for example, changes how the industry operates and pushes organisations to think beyond compliance and consider resilience as an essential part of how they do business.

One of the most immediate effects of NIS2 is the expansion of who falls within its scope, and it now includes managed service providers, cloud platforms, data centres, and other entities that were once outside traditional “critical infrastructure” definitions. 

The regulation sets clear expectations for incident detection and reporting, forcing many to rethink how they monitor, triage, and escalate potential threats. Security operations centres, whether internal or outsourced, now play a central role in this and having integrated monitoring and response services that can identify incidents, validate their severity, and trigger predefined workflows in real time is essential.

Modern industrial operations cannot afford lengthy downtime, so a strategy built on visibility, unified monitoring and sensor-driven intelligence allows organisations to maintain productivity while strengthening cyber resilience and compliance.