Overall, the manufacturing industry has made good progress in its use of technology in recent years, particular in the areas of accounting, payroll, human resources, estimating, project management, and so on. However, when it comes to cybersecurity, many manufacturing firms have fallen behind the curve. Unfortunately, the cybercriminals also know this and are trying to exploit it wherever they can.
Here are the 5 biggest areas where manufacturing firms have fallen behind on protecting themselves from cyberattacks:
- Wire Transfer Fraud — this presents a substantial risk in the industry, which are often moving large sums of money around for large orders with suppliers and customers. It is the biggest threat on this list because it directly affects the finances of a manufacturing firm. It's usually done with sophisticated social engineering techniques, and can affect both incoming and outgoing wire transfers or electronic funds transfers (EFT). In all cases, the result is funds being diverted to the bank account of the attacker, and if not reported to the bank within hours, the money may not be recoverable at all (and banks don't reimburse for this).
- Ransomware Infection — when a threat actor holds a computer system and/or its data hostage for payment, the costs are not only the ransom payment itself and the recovery time, but also the delays to production orders and potentially contract penalties or outright cancellations. Additionally, even if data can be recovered, there is no way to know what changes might have been made to it, intentionally or unintentionally.
- Downtime or Business Interruption — manufacturing firms are frequently judged on their ability to deliver projects on a deadline. A cyber-attack on one or more of its systems could potentially cause a delay, incurring penalties and damaging its reputation in extreme cases.
- Theft of Bid Data — with potentially millions of dollars on the line for a successful bid, it's imperative a company's bidding strategy remain tightly guarded. However, if this information is stored on a computer with insufficient cybersecurity protection in place, it can be stolen without anyone knowing and used to steal jobs, potentially putting the company out of business in a worst-case scenario.
- Theft of Intellectual Property — depending on the specific project and sector, a manufacturing company may have access to and store sensitive IP in the form of designs, drawings or schematics in its computer systems. In the event that these are leaked, it could result in massive reputational damage, government fines and/or expensive lawsuits.
All businesseses today need to make the appropriate investments into cybersecurity, to ensure their systems and data are protected, and that their staff are educated on how to spot potential issues, since many cyber attacks use social engineering (manipulating people) to gain the initial system access.
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