Established best practices
Adopting established cybersecurity tactics like ongoing employee education, device hardening, multi-factor authentication (MFA) and more will provide a fundamental layer of protection for manufacturers.
Innovative approaches
Manufacturers should also adopt new cybersecurity solutions built for industrial systems. Edge microsegmentation, for example, can help organizations secure legacy devices, prevent lateral movement, and significantly reduce the attack surface.
Manufacturing Cybersecurity Risks
What Is Motivating Cyber Attackers to Target Manufacturing?
Manufacturing has many characteristics that have made it an increasingly popular target of cybercrime. These motivations include its high-value intellectual property and the leverage the industry’s critical infrastructure status and downtime intolerance affords malicious actors.
Remote Access
Manufacturers increasingly rely on connected devices as part of the production process, but this trend has left many companies even more vulnerable to new attack vectors. IT teams often fail to apply sufficient security controls across the growing Wi-Fi access point sprawl. The result: a large and easily exploitable attack surface.
Legacy Devices
Manufacturers have immensely complex production systems that are a mix of newer machinery and legacy devices. Due to compatibility issues or technological limitations, these older machines are difficult to bring up to modern security standards, leaving large portions of the company’s network vulnerable to compromise.
Vendor Implementation
Manufacturing systems are also supported by a patchwork of vendor and third-party technology products. While these purpose-built solutions greatly enhance the efficiency of the process, they also introduce their own risks. Each integration represents a separate access point that a malicious actor could use to gain footing in the system.
Growing incidence of cyberattacks
61% of companies in the industry report that cyberattacks are more common in 2022 than in 2021.
Financial impact of cyberattacks
It costs an average of $2M for a manufacturer to recover its systems after a ransomware attack.
Widespread lack of cybersecurity expertise
Around 50% of industrial sector companies lack sufficient cybersecurity knowledge and resources.
Effectiveness of cybersecurity adoption
75% of the companies in the industrial sector report no breaches after improving their security posture.
Vulnerability of manufacturing equipment
Research indicates 73% of operational technology (OT) devices are left entirely unmanaged by IT.
Manufacturing Cybersecurity Response
How Can Companies Respond to the Growing Cyber Threat?
Manufacturers can no longer afford to neglect cybersecurity. Cybercriminals across the globe have turned their attention to this industry, and the companies that act now will safeguard themselves, their clients, and sometimes their communities from danger. Here are crucial steps that an organization can take to mitigate cyber risks:
