For decades, operational technology was treated as an engineering problem rather than a boardroom concern. Factory floors, power plants and logistics hubs ran on the assumption that isolation equalled safety. That assumption no longer holds. As manufacturing systems converge with IT networks and cloud platforms, operational technology (OT) has moved from the periphery of cybersecurity discussions to the centre of business continuity planning.
Globally, recent disruptions have made the stakes unambiguous. Cyber incidents in manufacturing and critical infrastructure have halted production lines, compromised safety systems and triggered cascading supply-chain failures. What distinguishes these events from traditional IT breaches is not just the technical architecture involved, but the speed with which cyber risk translates into physical and financial damage. In OT environments, minutes matter. Downtime is measured not only in lost data, but in lost output, contractual penalties and reputational erosion.
At the heart of this shift lies IT-OT convergence. Industrial control systems that were once air-gapped are now connected for efficiency, remote monitoring and predictive maintenance. Sensors feed real-time data into enterprise resource planning systems. Vendors access plant systems for diagnostics. Cloud dashboards promise visibility and optimisation. Each efficiency gain, however, expands the attack surface. Legacy programmable logic controllers were not designed with authentication, encryption or patching in mind. When exposed to modern threat vectors, they become fragile links in otherwise sophisticated digital ecosystems.
In advanced manufacturing economies, this reality has already forced a rethinking of security ownership. OT incidents are no longer escalated solely to engineering teams; they are discussed alongside enterprise risk registers, insurance coverage and crisis management protocols. Leading organisations have recognised that security operations centres (SOCs), traditionally focused on IT logs and alerts, must extend their visibility into industrial environments. The objective is not to turn plant engineers into cybersecurity analysts, but to ensure that abnormal behaviour in OT systems is detected early enough to prevent operational impact.
This reframing from cybersecurity as a defensive function to continuity as a strategic imperative is especially relevant for India. The country’s manufacturing ambitions rest on scale, cost competitiveness and reliability. Yet many Indian factories operate with a mix of modern automation and ageing control systems, often supported by third-party integrators with limited security oversight. The push towards smart manufacturing, industrial IoT and digital twins has accelerated connectivity faster than governance. As a result, the risk profile of Indian plants increasingly resembles that of global peers, without always matching their incident readiness.
The challenge is compounded by the nature of OT incidents. Unlike IT breaches, where systems can be shut down, isolated and restored, OT environments demand availability. You cannot simply reboot a blast furnace or stop a pharmaceutical batch mid-process without severe consequences. Incident response in OT therefore requires precision. It involves coordinated decision-making between cybersecurity teams, plant managers, safety officers and senior leadership. In many organisations, these relationships have never been stress-tested under cyber conditions.
Globally, best practice is moving towards scenario-based preparedness. Manufacturers are conducting tabletop exercises that simulate OT disruptions, testing not just technical responses but communication flows, regulatory obligations and customer commitments. These exercises reveal uncomfortable truths: unclear authority during incidents, lack of visibility into vendor access, and an overreliance on manual workarounds that may not scale in prolonged disruptions. The lesson is clear. Resilience is built before the incident, not during it.
For Indian industry, the opportunity lies in avoiding a purely reactive path. OT security does not need to be framed as a compliance burden or a technology upgrade alone. It can be positioned as an enabler of reliability and trust, particularly for export-oriented manufacturers embedded in global supply chains. Buyers increasingly assess operational resilience as part of vendor risk. A factory that can demonstrate robust OT governance, tested response plans and cross-functional ownership sends a powerful signal of maturity.
Critically, this shift also demands a change in leadership mindset. OT security cannot remain confined to the SOC or the plant floor. It must be owned at the intersection of operations, risk and strategy. Boards and senior executives need to ask different questions: Which processes are most sensitive to disruption? How quickly can production be safely recovered? What dependencies exist on vendors, power, connectivity and data integrity? These are continuity questions, not technical ones.
The transition from SOC-centric thinking to business continuity-driven resilience marks a turning point for manufacturing globally. Cyber risk in OT environments is no longer an abstract threat. It is a factory survival issue. For India, embracing this reality early could be the difference between scaling manufacturing ambition and being constrained by invisible vulnerabilities. In an era where resilience defines competitiveness, secure operations are no longer optional, they are foundational.
