Honda picks Macrium for US factory backup & recovery

Honda has selected Macrium to provide backup and recovery across its US industrial and manufacturing operations, with the rollout aimed at improving recovery readiness at production sites.

The deployment includes centralised backup management and protection for air-gapped devices in Honda's US manufacturing network. Honda will use Macrium's SiteBackup product and a Technician's Licence to standardise backup and recovery processes across critical production environments.

The agreement is intended to reduce the risk of disruption in factory settings, where outages can halt production lines and affect plant operations. Macrium cited research indicating that downtime in manufacturing can cost more than USD $100,000 per hour.

Operational focus

Manufacturers have increased spending on cyber security and resilience tools in recent years, but incident recovery remains uneven across many industrial environments. In operational technology settings, systems often include embedded devices, older equipment, and isolated assets that are harder to manage with a single backup approach.

Honda's choice reflects a broader effort among manufacturers to tighten control over recovery processes for these systems. Centralised oversight can help standardise procedures across sites, while dedicated protection for air-gapped devices addresses equipment intentionally kept separate from wider networks.

The deployment followed a competitive selection process. Macrium focuses on backup and recovery software for manufacturing and critical infrastructure environments.

Dave Joyce, chief executive officer of Macrium, said the partnership is focused on reducing operational risk in factories. "In manufacturing environments, every minute of downtime carries real consequences," Joyce said.

"Our focus with Honda is ensuring that their critical systems can be restored quickly and consistently across facilities, removing unnecessary complexity. Given Honda's meticulous engineering standards and commitment to quality, we're honored that Honda chose Macrium after a rigorous and open selection process to help protect their critical systems and recover quickly when it matters most."

Downtime costs

Macrium linked the Honda contract to findings from its recent manufacturing benchmark research with NewtonX. According to the study, 74% of manufacturers experience downtime at least once a year.

The research found that ransomware and other cyber threats account for 5% of downtime. Most prolonged outages stem from network errors, configuration changes, planned maintenance issues, or backup and recovery systems that have not been properly validated.

That points to a wider issue in industrial resilience planning. While cyber incidents draw significant attention from boards and plant operators, day-to-day operational failures and weak recovery testing can still cause longer periods of disruption.

Automotive sector

The Honda deal also expands Macrium's customer base in the automotive sector. Other manufacturers, including Volvo and Husco, also use its software in production environments.

Automotive plants are particularly exposed to outages because they rely on tightly sequenced processes, integrated supplier flows, and equipment that must remain available across shifts. Even short interruptions can create knock-on effects for output, labour scheduling, and maintenance windows.

By putting a centrally managed backup and recovery structure in place, Honda is seeking a more consistent way to restore systems across multiple facilities. The approach is designed around embedded manufacturing systems and other assets that support plant operations.

Macrium's research identified the main causes of prolonged manufacturing outages as network errors, configuration changes, planned maintenance issues, and backup and recovery systems that have not been properly validated.