Integrate IT/OT Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery

Minimal collaboration exists between IT and OT teams when developing organizational business continuity management.
OT business continuity planning lacks the same rigor and thoroughness as their IT counterparts.
IT and OT dependencies are only discovered during a disruption, causing extended delays.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Utilities must stop treating IT and OT business continuity as separate concerns – true resilience requires an integrated, shared-risk approach. IT and OT leaders must collaborate to develop, execute, and refine a BCM to support the continuity of the business when faced with the heighted risk of disruptions.

Impact and Result

Minimize business disruptions by ensuring IT/OT business processes and technology have adequate continuity programs and resources.
Future-proof convergence processes, amplify collaboration, and maximize the skillset between IT and OT teams

Integrate IT/OT Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Research & Tools

1. Integrate IT/OT Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery – A four-phase strategy framework to help utility organizations integrate their IT and OT teams when developing an organizational business continuity management strategy.]

This project helps utilities shift from fragmented business continuity management to a unified, cross-domain IT/OT approach. The result is an actionable and integrated toolkit that guides members to strengthen resilience across IT and OT environments through boundary definition, technology and process identification, and overall governance design.

2. Stakeholder Register Template – An Excel template to identify and document IT/OT stakeholders and assess their level of influence and interest in the development and execution of the BCM.

Use this template to analyze initial stakeholder influence and interest in execution of IT/OT applications and processes and to identify, track, and prioritize stakeholder requirements and expectations for the project.

3. IT/OT Application Heat Map & Processes List – A template aligned to ISA95 to identify the dependent IT and OT applications and business processes.

A template and deliverable to facilitate the identification of the dependencies of IT and OT systems, applications, and business processes to include in the develop of the IT DRP and IT/OT BCP.

4. Utilities Business Impact Assessment Tool – A tool to estimate and prioritize the downtime impact of IT/OT applications and business processes.

[This tool enables you to define objective scoring criteria to assess the downtime impact of critical IT/OT applications/systems/processes. Additionally, the tool will identify any gaps between the objectives and actuals of your organization’s existing recovery processes.

5. IT/OT Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan RACI – RACI tool to document IT/OT roles and responsibilities for disaster recovery and continuity workarounds.

This RACI helps your organization document the roles and responsibilities of disaster recovery workflows and business continuity workarounds. Disaster recovery workflows focus on recovery of IT/OT systems and data completed in the application heat-map. Buisiness continuity workarounds focus on resuming business operations to an acceptable level during or after a disruption to IT/OT systems.

Minimize disruptions by breaking down IT/OT silos.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 4-phase advisory process. You'll receive 8 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Align

Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and specific challenges.
Call 2: Identify key IT/OT stakeholders as part of the BCP journey.
Call 3: Define IT/OT definition and boundaries.

Guided Implementation 2: Identify

Call 1: Highlight applications where convergence exists and assign IT and/or OT ownership.
Call 2: Identify IT/OT processes impacted by IT/OT applications disruptions.

Guided Implementation 3: Develop

Call 1: Complete BIA for converging applications/ capabilities.
Call 2: Design recovery workflows and business continuity workarounds for identified applications and processes.

Guided Implementation 4: Sustain

Call 1: Define IT/OT governance structure and committees.

Author

Bevin Chau

Contributors

Mark Thomas, Director of IT Operational Technology, Denver Water
Roderick Cook, Information Security Officer, Modesto Irrigation District
Chris Vasche, OT Analyst. Modesto Irrigation District

Search Code: 108967
Last Revised: November 24, 2025

TAGS:

IT/OT Convergence, Utilities Disaster Recovery, Utilities Business Continuity Planning, IT OT Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery OT systems, OT Recovery plan