As cyberattackers get more advanced, businesses must constantly reassess their defences to effectively manage risk. Are your cybersecurity defences robust enough to survive sophisticated cyberattacks? And should an attack get through, are your processes resilient enough to bounce back quickly? 

Manufacturing is the most attacked industry globally.¹ The ramifications of a data breach can extend well beyond reputational harm, financial penalties, and remediation expenses. For manufacturers, a breach has the potential to jeopardise public safety by disrupting production processes. Notably, the manufacturing sector stands out as one of the few industries where the fallout from a breach may involve criminal charges against the targeted organisation and its employees.

The 2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) examined 1,817 incidents in the manufacturing sector. Most (90%) of these were from threat actors outside of the organisation. It concluded that “financially motivated external actors continue to wreak havoc in this industry.” ²

There are a multitude of ways that a cybercriminal can make money by attacking a manufacturer. Like any other company, manufacturers can be a target for direct financial attacks, such as banking or payment fraud. They also face the threat of extortion over stolen intellectual property (IP) and production secrets. But the biggest risk is possibly the threat of downtime. 

There’s a good reason why ransomware attackers are disproportionately targeting manufacturers.³ Faced with the threat of your production screeching to a halt, it’s very tempting to just pay up.

Investing in the right security technology can help you simplify and automate security across your business, keeping your operations running smoothly and your sensitive data out of the wrong hands.

It’s a big task. Are your current security technologies up to the job?

Spend your security budget more wisely, help improve your defences and be better prepared to respond to attacks by understanding the threats your organisation faces.

The DBIR is an authoritative source of cybersecurity breach information. Each year, the DBIR team analyses tens of thousands of incidents and breaches from around the world. They identify cybersecurity trends and help organisations take a data-driven approach to optimising their cybersecurity programs.

Manufacturing environments can be complex for a variety of reasons. On top of the standard business applications and data, they have operational technology (OT) systems to support too. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) also means that manufacturers often have a lot of different devices, equipment and architecture to protect.

Do you understand your estate well enough to initiate security transformation and change? Lots of manufacturers admit to us that they don’t. 

The risks of inadequate security include the loss of: 

• Sensitive data, including customer and supplier information
• Trust from customers, partners, shareholders and investors
• Intellectual property, including design files and production secrets
• Business—as deadlines are missed and customers turn elsewhere

Any one of these can affect a manufacturer’s bottom line and future competitiveness. 

As the threats and potential consequences grow, many manufacturers are investing in new tools to protect their businesses. But investing in point solutions can actually exacerbate the problem. Research shows that medium-sized companies have between 50 and 60 security tools, and enterprises have over 130.⁴

The complexity that comes with managing multiple solutions can increase the management burden, make it hard to get a complete picture of the environment and leave gaps in your defences.

Secure access service edge (SASE) is an approach that brings together software-defined wide area network (SD WAN) access and cloud based security solutions, including firewalls, cloud access security brokers (CASB) and data loss prevention (DLP). The SASE framework is designed to support how manufacturers operate today and give them a platform for innovation and greater agility.

Ask for help and leverage experienced security partners.

With a global shortage of experienced cybersecurity professionals, attracting, training and retaining skilled workers can be a daunting challenge.

Simplifying solutions and leveraging automation has a critical role to play in easing the burden on the internal team, but most companies still choose to rely on third-party help.

External partners can do much more than provide staff augmentation. They can contribute expertise and share experience gained from tackling a wide range of security challenges.

The right partner can help you turn security into a competitive advantage by creating a robust environment that enables innovation and allows you to focus on what differentiates your business.

Verizon has vast experience helping manufacturers solve some of their biggest challenges. We have decades of relevant experience, which enables us to provide practical and effective advice. Our global network, computing and security ecosystem can help you manage-risk transformation, accelerate change and better achieve the promise of digital technologies.