Manufacturers are still pelted by cyberattacks left, right, and center. A survey published by Morphisec has found that one in five manufacturing companies in the sector has been compromised in a cyber incident. 

Some stats your way

  • Among the 567 manufacturing employees surveyed, 24% of the firms are attacked every week. More than a third (35%) witnessed attacks on a monthly basis.
  • Between March 2020 and March 2021, banking trojans and infostealers accounted for 31%, followed by fileless and unknown attacks at 28% and ransomware attacks at 15%. 
  • Among the respondents, 5% noted that their organizations required 15–20 days to recover from the attacks. 

Why does it matter?

  • The first factor behind these stats is that as manufacturers are moving to smarter products, they are not well prepared to defend the increased attack surface due to digital connectivity. 
  • Moreover, manufacturing firms have not yet implemented the required security measures to deal with critical threats proactively. 

Latest attacks on the manufacturing sector

  • JBS, the world’s largest meat manufacturer, was brought down to its knees due to a recent cyberattack. It had resulted in the shutting down of five meat processing plants across Australia and the U.S.
  • Two Italian manufacturing facilities fell victim to a ransomware incident that shut down its production. 

The bottom line

While the statistics show that the manufacturing sector needs to be more vigilant, efforts also need to be put toward training employees and leveraging threat intelligence to improve cyber readiness. A good crisis is always the welcoming call for hackers. Be it the COVID-19 pandemic or some other crisis, manufacturing companies will be targeted. Hence, proactive defense is the call of the hour.

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