Essentials for OT
PRO-10 Regular and proven backups
Be able to rebuild OT after an incident. Back up the firmware, configuration, logic and other files needed to rebuild it, offline at each site. Regularly test rebuilds and restores against your recovery targets, including rebuilding with no backups.
Reviewed 18 October 2026 · Current to ASD's Essentials for OT, published 15 October 2026
The principle
Systems (infrastructure, operating systems, applications and data) are regularly backed up in a secure and proven manner, including through the validation of restoration capabilities.
The two actions
ASD's actions are quoted as published in Essentials for OT. ASD has not given them IDs, so they are numbered by position.
Action 1 of 2
Conduct regular testing of rebuild, backup and restoration procedures to ensure that they are reliable and capable of meeting defined recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives, including rebuilding in the absence of backups.
In plain English: Regularly test rebuild, backup and restore procedures, including rebuilding without backups. Make sure they reliably meet your set targets for recovery time and data loss.
- Domains
- Critical processes and services
- Boundary services
- Identity services
- Privileged environments
- MITRE ATT&CK
- Data destruction
- Modify program
Action 2 of 2
Backup the firmware, configuration, licence, calibration, project and logic files and supplier images required to rebuild OT, held per site and isolated from network access, on a defined schedule aligned to criticality and rate of change, and maintained to support restoration to a common point in time.
In plain English: Keep per-site offline backups of firmware, configuration, licence, calibration, project, logic files and supplier images to rebuild OT. Schedule them by criticality and change rate, restorable to a common point in time.
- Domains
- Critical processes and services
- MITRE ATT&CK
- Data destruction
- Modify program
See all 34 principles in Essentials for OT, or read our OT guide.
Sources
The ASD publications this page quotes.
Quoted ASD material © Commonwealth of Australia 2026, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
MITRE ATT&CK® technique names and IDs: © 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. See MITRE's ATT&CK terms of use.
Everything else on this page is written by Control Stack.