New Member Spotlight: Copia Automation

Copia Automation is the newest addition to the Operational Technology Cybersecurity Coalition. Copia's work centers on recovery, helping industrial organizations get their operations back to a safe, verified state once a disruption has occurred, whether the cause is an attacker or an unintended change. We asked Copia to share more about what they do, why they wanted to be part of this coalition, and where they see the greatest risk to critical infrastructure right now.

Tell us a little about what your company offers critical infrastructure owners and operators who want to secure their operations.

Copia closes the recovery gap for industrial organizations. We provide automated, versioned backups of PLC and controller code that are verified and ready to restore, so teams are never guessing whether their last good configuration is actually recoverable. On top of that, we deliver version control built for the plant floor: baseline integrity, full change history, drift detection, and a verified last known good state that operators can roll back to with confidence. Together, these capabilities mean that when a disruption hits, whether from a threat actor or a bad change, our customers can restore operations quickly instead of rebuilding from scratch. In a landscape where adversaries are actively targeting the nation's most critical infrastructure, that difference is measured in minutes and hours of downtime rather than weeks and months.

Why did your company decide to join a coalition with their competitors? Why is this so important?

Securing critical infrastructure is a team effort. No single organization, however capable, can defend these systems alone, and the threats facing them do not respect competitive boundaries. That is why we chose to work alongside organizations that share our commitment to this mission. Protecting the systems that keep the world running demands that we share what we know, align on standards, and defend collectively rather than in a silo.

What do you think is the top cybersecurity threat facing critical infrastructure owners and operators today?

The greatest cybersecurity risk facing critical infrastructure owners and operators today is the recovery gap: the stretch of time between an incident and a full return to normal operations. Many organizations lack both the technology and the in-house capability to restore systems to a last known good state, which means a single disruption can translate into extended downtime, steep financial losses, and cascading effects on the communities they serve.

What is the most critical step the federal government can take with critical infrastructure owners and operators to better secure their OT systems? What is the most critical step federal agencies who have operational technology can take to make those systems more secure?

The answer is the same in both cases: setting clear requirements for the security and resilience capabilities these organizations need, and funding them.

From where we sit in OT backup and recovery, we see the pattern constantly. Operators know they need validated, recoverable backups for their assets. What they often lack is the budget line and the staff hours to stand that up and keep it current. Clear requirements are the right starting point, and pairing them with funding is what makes them stick. Most critical infrastructure owners and operators run lean teams, so support has to come alongside the expectation. Tax breaks, incentives, and direct financial aid would move OT security and recovery readiness from an aspiration to something these organizations can realistically achieve. Federal agencies running their own operational technology work under the same constraint, which is why any requirement directed at them lands best with appropriated dollars behind it rather than as a directive absorbed into an existing operating budget.

We also emphasize that recovery deserves to be named explicitly in any mandates. Prevention and detection tend to get the attention, but the question that decides how an incident ends is how quickly a plant, substation, or treatment facility can restore last known-good configurations and resume safe operations. Requirements that call for tested, offline-capable, regularly validated OT backups, along with documented and exercised recovery time objectives, give operators something concrete to fund and demonstrate.

Funding goes further still when operators have a clear picture of what is being asked of them. Many answer to sector-specific regulators, state authorities, and several federal agencies at once, and consolidating those expectations into a coherent framework would free up scarce staff capacity for the work itself. One clear set of obligations a lean team can understand, implement, and demonstrate compliance with, paired with the money to actually do it.

We're glad to have Copia's recovery-first perspective in the coalition, and we're looking forward to what we'll build together.