OT Incident Response for Control Systems

Incident response in control environments must protect safety and continuity while containing threats. Practical readiness comes from predefined playbooks, clear command structure, and rehearsed recovery procedures.

Common Failure Points

• Roles during OT incidents are unclear between IT and OT teams.
• Containment actions risk unintended production impact.
• Recovery procedures are undocumented or never tested.

Control Strategy

• Create incident playbooks by scenario type and consequence tier.
• Define unified command model with OT decision authority.
• Pre-approve containment actions that preserve safe operation.

Implementation Steps

• Run tabletop and live technical drills quarterly.
• Maintain offline backups and tested restoration runbooks.
• Capture after-action findings and close corrective actions.

KPIs to Track

• Time to detect and classify incident
• Time to containment
• Time to safe recovery
• Repeat incident frequency

30-60-90 Day Plan

• Day 1-30: finalize playbooks and incident roles.
• Day 31-60: run first drill and address process gaps.
• Day 61-90: validate recovery execution under timed conditions.