Smarter cyber resilience for food manufacturing

Citadelle strengthens cyber resilience with IBM FlashSystem and Storage Defender for faster, cleaner recovery

Aerial view of a greenhouse
Increasing needs for protection across production systems

Citadelle, a Canadian leader in food manufacturing, needed to advance how it protected data and production systems as cyber risks evolved at an increasingly rapid pace. Its existing backup and storage processes relied on manual oversight and offered limited ways to verify whether data was clean, uncompromised or ready for fast recovery. This made it difficult to confirm recovery readiness across operations and introduced uncertainty when restoring essential production systems. Without an isolated environment to test backup integrity, the team could not reliably identify corrupted or incomplete data before a recovery event. As digital demands continued to accelerate across its manufacturing footprint, Citadelle required a more integrated and future‑ready approach to safeguard data, support secure replication and maintain confidence in business continuity.

75% faster recovery time 80% fewer manual backup tasks 90% faster data validation
In food manufacturing, a production outage is not an option. Before, we hoped our backups were good. Today, with IBM FlashSystem, IBM Storage Defender and Predatar clean room, we have the certainty that our data is protected, validated and ready before we even need to restore.
Mehdi Dhaouadi IT Director Citadelle
Securing production: resilient data for food makers

Citadelle partnered with IBM to build a smarter, more resilient data protection foundation for its food manufacturing operations. IBM® FlashSystem® delivered secure replication and immutable Safeguarded Copy snapshots, providing instant recovery points in the event of an incident to help protect critical production data. Relying on  and FlashCore Module (FCM), the cooperative gains AI‑powered, in‑array ransomware detection that identifies abnormal I/O behavior in less than a minute—empowering teams to stop attacks sooner and strengthen overall data resilience. IBM Storage Defender – Data Protect added centralized visibility, automated recovery workflows and intelligent anomaly detection to reduce reliance on manual tasks. IBM Technology Expert Labs® also implemented an isolated cleanroom environment for prerecovery validation. Together, these capabilities replaced fragmented processes with an integrated, verifiable recovery model—helping Citadelle move from slow, manual backup checks to faster, cleaner and more confident recovery across its production systems.

Cyber resilient recovery for production systems

Modernizing its data protection landscape with IBM has strengthened Citadelle’s ability to restore production systems quickly and safely. IBM FlashSystem Safeguarded Copy provides secure, unalterable snapshots that reduce recovery risk and support cleaner restorations. With Safeguarded Copy, Citadelle went from zero validated recovery points to two clean, immutable snapshots per day—ensuring reliable, verified restore points are always available during cyber events. Safeguarded Copy also enables the cooperative to restore known-good snapshots in under 60 seconds, drastically reducing recovery preparation time and delivering fast, predictable restoration when it matters most. IBM Storage Defender – Data Protect automates integrity checks, helping Citadelle cut manual backup work by 80%. Combined with its cleanroom validation environment, Citadelle can maintain near‑zero system interruption even in the event of a major cyber incident—keeping production lines running and protecting the supply chain.

About Citadelle

Citadelle is a Canadian maple syrup cooperative founded in 1925. Based in Quebec, it unites nearly 1,500 producer families and operates as a global leader in food manufacturing, producing pure maple products and other natural ingredients for markets worldwide.

Solution components IBM FlashSystem® IBM® Storage Defender IBM Technology Expert Labs
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Examples presented as illustrative only. Actual results will vary based on client configurations and conditions and, therefore, generally expected results cannot be provided.