A0006: Data Historian

A data historian is often the bridge between operational process data and business or engineering analysis. That makes it important beyond “just another OT server”: it may hold telemetry, events, alerts, alarms, and process history, and it commonly needs some form of corporate-network access or data transfer path. If poorly governed, it can become a place to observe process state, collect sensitive operational information, or disrupt the availability and integrity of data that operators and business teams rely on.

Executive priority

Treat historians as high-value ICS assets because they connect operational visibility with business use cases. Leaders should ask whether historian access paths between ICS and corporate networks are explicitly designed, documented, monitored, and justified; whether remote services are limited to approved use; and whether the organization can prove who accessed historian data, from where, and for what purpose. This matters for operational resilience, audit evidence, incident scoping, and cyber-physical risk decisions when process telemetry or alarms are part of safety, reliability, or production workflows.

Technical view

For SOC, detection engineering, and IR teams, validate visibility around Windows, Linux, and embedded historian deployments and the network paths that aggregate lower/site-level historians into plant or site historians. Relationship context shows this asset can be targeted by process-state monitoring, automated collection, information repository collection, remote services, CLI/GUI access, discovery, port/broadcast/multicast scanning, network sniffing, adversary-in-the-middle activity, valid accounts, scripting, masquerading, rootkits, data destruction, denial of service, and restart/shutdown behavior. Because MITRE provides no official detection guidance for this asset, local baselines are essential: normal historian queries, approved engineering/business analytics jobs, expected data-transfer services, and sanctioned remote access should be clearly distinguishable from unusual enumeration, bulk access, administrative sessions, or destructive changes.

Likely telemetry

Historian application logs, database access logs, query history, export activity, and alarm/event access records
Authentication and authorization logs for users, service accounts, remote services, and corporate-to-ICS access paths
Windows and Linux endpoint telemetry: process execution, command-line use, scripting activity, service changes, file creation/deletion, and system restart/shutdown events
Network flow and packet metadata between lower/site historians, plant/site historians, ICS segments, and corporate network consumers
Remote access, GUI, VPN/Citrix or other external remote service session logs where applicable

Detection direction

Start with an approved communications map: which systems may query, administer, replicate, or receive data from each historian tier.
Baseline normal business analytics, engineering analysis, vendor transfer tools, and scheduled aggregation jobs to reduce false positives from legitimate high-volume historian access.
Tune for unusual access patterns: new source hosts, new accounts, off-hours sessions, unexpected remote services, abnormal query/export volume, or access to process-state data outside known workflows.
Correlate endpoint and network signals: CLI/GUI sessions, scripting, native API activity, file changes, and remote sessions should be reviewed alongside historian queries and network discovery.
Watch for discovery around historian assets, including port scans, broadcast discovery, multicast discovery, network connection enumeration, and sniffing-related indicators where sensors support it.

Mitigation priorities

Inventory historians, their operating platforms, tiers, databases, interfaces, remote services, and approved corporate-network dependencies.
Prefer controlled historian data-transfer architectures over broad direct corporate access to historians inside the ICS network, consistent with the asset description.
Restrict remote services and administrative interfaces to approved users, systems, and network paths; review valid accounts and service accounts for least privilege.
Maintain segmentation and access control between corporate networks, site/plant historians, and lower/site-level historians while preserving required operational data flows.
Harden Windows, Linux, and embedded historian hosts by reducing unnecessary services, controlling CLI/GUI administration paths, and monitoring scripting and file changes.

Additional notes and limits

The most important decision point is whether the historian is treated as a monitored boundary asset between operations and business users, not merely as an engineering database. The relationships show a broad set of possible adversary interactions, but they do not prove that every historian exposes every interface or risk. Local architecture, vendor implementation, account model, and data-transfer design determine which controls and detections matter most.

MITRE provides an asset description, platforms, and relationships, but no official detection guidance, tactics, aliases, or vendor-specific implementation details. This take does not assert active exploitation, attribution, or guaranteed detection coverage. Validation requires environment-specific evidence from historian architecture, logs, network flows, identity systems, and remote access controls.

Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

Data Historian

Data historians, or historian, are systems used to collect and store data, including telemetry, events, alerts, and alarms about the operational process and supporting devices. The historian typically utilizes a database to store this data, and commonly provide tools and interfaces to support the analysis of the data. Data historians are often used to support various engineering or business analysis functions and therefore commonly needs access from the corporate network. Data historians often work in a hierarchical paradigm where lower/site level historians collect and store data which is then aggregated into a site/plant level historian. Therefore, data historians often have remote services that can be accessed externally from the ICS network. Many data historian vendors have designed their software to securely transfer data between the ICS and business networks instead of requiring business systems to access the data historian in the ICS network directly.

View the same entry on attack.mitre.org (MITRE-hosted reference; in-page links above use the Glexia ATT&CK library.)

Glexia analysis

How security teams should use this page

Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.

ATT&CK relationship table

Techniques used

This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.

Filter related techniques46 rows

Domain	ID	Name	Relationship / procedure
ICS	T0862	Supply Chain Compromise	Supply Chain Compromise targets this object.
ICS	T0872	Indicator Removal on Host	Indicator Removal on Host targets this object.
ICS	T0811	Data from Information Repositories	Data from Information Repositories targets this object.
ICS	T0823	Graphical User Interface	Graphical User Interface targets this object.
ICS	T0885	Commonly Used Port	Commonly Used Port targets this object.
ICS	T0846	Remote System Discovery	Remote System Discovery targets this object.
ICS	T0892	Change Credential	Change Credential targets this object.
ICS	T0830	Adversary-in-the-Middle	Adversary-in-the-Middle targets this object.
ICS	T0842	Network Sniffing	Network Sniffing targets this object.
ICS	T0874	Hooking	Hooking targets this object.
ICS	T0814	Denial of Service	Denial of Service targets this object.
ICS	T0853	Scripting	Scripting targets this object.
ICS	T0816	Device Restart/Shutdown	Device Restart/Shutdown targets this object.
ICS	T0881	Service Stop	Service Stop targets this object.
ICS	T0801	Monitor Process State	Monitor Process State targets this object.
ICS	T0893	Data from Local System	Data from Local System targets this object.
ICS	T0820	Exploitation for Evasion	Exploitation for Evasion targets this object.
ICS	T0847	Replication Through Removable Media	Replication Through Removable Media targets this object.
ICS	T0846.002	Broadcast DiscoverySub-technique	Broadcast Discovery targets this object.
ICS	T0846.003	Multicast DiscoverySub-technique	Multicast Discovery targets this object.
ICS	T0866	Exploitation of Remote Services	Exploitation of Remote Services targets this object.
ICS	T0849	Masquerading	Masquerading targets this object.
ICS	T0895	Autorun Image	Autorun Image targets this object.
ICS	T1694.001	Default CredentialsSub-technique	Default Credentials targets this object.
ICS	T1695.002	EthernetSub-technique	Ethernet targets this object.
ICS	T0878	Alarm Suppression	Alarm Suppression targets this object.
ICS	T0840	Network Connection Enumeration	Network Connection Enumeration targets this object.
ICS	T0869	Standard Application Layer Protocol	Standard Application Layer Protocol targets this object.
ICS	T0884	Connection Proxy	Connection Proxy targets this object.
ICS	T0848	Rogue Master	Rogue Master targets this object.
ICS	T1695	Block Communications	Block Communications targets this object.
ICS	T0859	Valid Accounts	Valid Accounts targets this object.
ICS	T0807	Command-Line Interface	Command-Line Interface targets this object.
ICS	T0851	Rootkit	Rootkit targets this object.
ICS	T0894	System Binary Proxy Execution	System Binary Proxy Execution targets this object.
ICS	T0886	Remote Services	Remote Services targets this object.
ICS	T1695.003	Wi-FiSub-technique	Wi-Fi targets this object.
ICS	T1694	Insecure Credentials	Insecure Credentials targets this object.
ICS	T0846.001	Port ScanSub-technique	Port Scan targets this object.
ICS	T0834	Native API	Native API targets this object.
ICS	T0822	External Remote Services	External Remote Services targets this object.
ICS	T0890	Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	Exploitation for Privilege Escalation targets this object.
ICS	T0861	Point & Tag Identification	Point & Tag Identification targets this object.
ICS	T0809	Data Destruction	Data Destruction targets this object.
ICS	T0888	Remote System Information Discovery	Remote System Information Discovery targets this object.
ICS	T0802	Automated Collection	Automated Collection targets this object.

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Object version and sync metadata

The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.

ATT&CK release: 19.1
Object version: 2.1
Created: Sep 28, 2023, 14:48 UTC (UTC+00:00)
Modified: May 12, 2026, 15:12 UTC (UTC+00:00)
Raw hash: b84fa8dd662ed5e1...

Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(1)

Release	Bundle imported	Object version	Modified	Status	Raw hash
19.1	Jul 14, 2026, 09:14 UTC (UTC+00:00)	2.1	May 12, 2026, 15:12 UTC (UTC+00:00)	Current bundle	`b84fa8dd662e…`

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[1]
mitre-attackA0006
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