As a small or medium-sized manufacturing business owner, unplanned operational downtime can cause major production delays, dealing a potentially devastating blow to your bottom line.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the common ways threat actors are targeting manufacturers, and we’ll outline ways managed IT services can help you strengthen your defenses against these pervasive threats.
In 2024, the average cost of a data breach for industrial organizations was $5.56 million, up from $4.73 million in 2023, according to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach report. Those breaches led to significant or highly disruptive downtime for 70 percent of affected businesses, the survey found.
Such cyber incidents are also taking longer to detect and contain, with an average window of about 200 days to identify and 73 days to contain, according to the report. To add to the pain, the downtime led to a cascade of other problems, including lost business, order delays, and extensive recovery costs.
With manufacturers expected to remain a top target of threat actors in the coming years, businesses like yours need to take steps to strengthen your security defenses to make sure your business continues running smoothly into the future.
Doing so will ensure you can complete orders on time, maintain quality control, manage inventories, and remain competitive in a dynamic industry.
Cybercriminals have consistently targeted manufacturing companies for several reasons.
Manufacturers’ frequent reliance on legacy IT equipment, along with their valuable intellectual property, extensive supply chain, and often weak security posture are all contributing factors that make industrial businesses an attractive target of cybercriminals.
The latter reason is especially true with small manufacturers, who may lack the money and internal IT support to implement and maintain the right cybersecurity tools and systems to protect their businesses and keep their sensitive information safe.
Some of the top cyber threats facing manufacturers today include:
Ransomware attacks against the manufacturing industry have surged in recent years. In fact, according to Honeywell’s 2025 Cybersecurity Threat Report, the industrial sector saw a 46 percent jump in ransomware attacks from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025.
According to the report, attackers are now using ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) as an easier and more lucrative way to launch attacks. A subscription service, RaaS allows inexperienced hackers to get in on the dark web fraud network by paying to play.
Such was the case with the recent spate of Scattered Spider cyberattacks that used data theft and extortion for financial gain. These attacks, which targeted C-suite executives across many different industries, were mostly carried about by groups of teens and young adults, according to published reports.
Related Article: How Scattered Spider Social Engineering Attackers Target Helpdesks
A Scattered Spider attack in 2023 against Clorox caused significant supply chain disruptions, leading to product shortages and substantial revenue losses.
Manufacturers rely heavily on their supply chains to get the necessary parts, raw materials, and specialized equipment needed to build the finished product for their customers.
Cyber attackers will often hit manufacturing supply chains as a way to gain unauthorized access and spread the attack.
That’s because their vendors, suppliers, and third-party service providers often have significantly weaker security defenses, allowing threat actors an easier, backdoor way to infiltrate systems and gain access to the manufacturer’s highly valuable information.
Attackers use various methods to carry out these supply chain cyberattacks.
Those methods include sophisticated social engineering attacks where they can use stolen credentials to pretend to be a known company official or contact—such as with business email compromise (BEC), spoofing, and smishing (fake texts).
Related Article: What Is Spoofing In IT Security? 3 Actions To Keep Your Business Safe
Often using AI to increase believability, these and other phishing schemes are used to trick individuals within the third-party partners to unknowingly do something to set off the cyberattack.
Such actions can give attackers an opening to spread malware by injecting malicious code into software, launch a ransomware attack to extort money by taking control of data, or steal data to sell on the dark web.
These stealth cyberattacks can cause substantial supply chain disruptions, leading to a host of issues, including stolen data, operational shutdowns, damaged equipment, and financial loss.
As we’ve said, the valuable intellectual property manufacturing companies possess is one of the main draws for threat actors. Trade secrets for confidential manufacturing processes, brand trademarks, and patents for new product designs are just a few examples of the highly sought-after data.
Attackers are constantly coming up with new ways to steal or compromise such proprietary information. Often, cybercriminals hold onto the data and threaten to release it, forcing businesses to shut down operations until a ransom is paid to regain control of their IT systems.
Since it’s well-known that manufacturing businesses frequently use legacy equipment, this is another lure for bad actors. Aging equipment that has passed its end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-support (EOS) dates present ripe opportunities for threat actors to strike.
Related Article: Windows 10 End of Life (EOL): Do Your Devices Support Windows 11?
That’s because EOL and (EOS) hardware and software are no longer getting technical support or receiving critical security patches from the vendor or manufacturer. Cybercriminals are well aware of this fact, so they use it as a backdoor way into your network.
Keep in mind that these kinds of security flaws aren’t always in just the IT equipment itself.
Since most manufacturers today rely on automation for speed and efficiency on the factory floor, your manufacturing equipment itself could also be increasing your cyber risk.
For instance, your internet of things devices (IoT)—including smart industrial sensors, RFID tags, and security cameras—could be manipulated by bad actors, leading to faulty products or safety issues.
Many cyber incidents start off not because of a security vulnerability within your systems, but from human weaknesses.
Scammers use phishing attacks as a way to prey on human emotions such as fear, urgency, implicit trust/authority, and curiosity to trick victims into sharing sensitive information, clicking a malicious link, or downloading an infected file.
This can allow the attackers a workaround to security controls you may have in place, allowing them to launch a larger attack, such as malware, ransomware, or a zero day attack—an attack that exploits a previously undetected security flaw in your infrastructure.
Related Article: What Are The Pillars Of Zero Trust? How Zero Trust Architecture Works
Not only do small and mid-sized manufacturers like you face growing pressures from rising operational and supply costs, but many are also dealing with a shortage of qualified cybersecurity expertise.
You may lack an in-house cybersecurity expert who can develop and implement a comprehensive security strategy for your organization and lead your regulatory compliance journey.
Without a strategic security plan, this can lead to increased risks of cyber incidents as well as potential fines and penalties for failing to comply with required security mandates, such as NIST 800-171 and CMMC 2.0.
Manufacturers can benefit from managed IT in many ways. They include:
If you’re like many small to mid-sized manufacturers, you may have a small in-house IT department, or none at all.
A trusted, local managed IT service provider (MSP) can offer a wide range of scalable IT services such as network management, managed workstations with automated patching, advanced cybersecurity monitoring, managed servers, and ongoing IT maintenance, among many others.
In addition, managed IT allows you to plan your technology budget by delivering predictable monthly pricing.
Perhaps your internal IT staff doesn’t have the time or the specialized skills necessary to be able to lead your IT modernization and establish a strong security posture.
Your MSP will work with your team to provide customized IT tools, services, and support tailored to your business.
This means whether you need help with a specific IT project or need the provider to take the reins completely with fully managed maintenance and IT support, you can choose the right solutions to fit your needs.
With managed IT support, knowledgeable IT professionals can provide insight on the latest industry changes that could impact your business, help you price and compare features of new technologies, and identify issues within your environment that could be hindering your growth, such as network misconfigurations and poor data management.
With managed IT, you can develop a strategic roadmap to help you meet cybersecurity compliance requirements.
You’ll also get an entire team of IT and cybersecurity experts who can create and implement a strategic cybersecurity plan for your business.
In addition, your provider can update or help you create any needed documentation, such as an incident response plan (IRP) and business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR).
At Kelser Corporation, we’ve helped many manufacturing clients over our more than forty years of existence by providing proactive support and comprehensive IT solutions tailored to their business.
If you need help strengthening your IT environment within your manufacturing facility, securing your valuable data, modernizing your infrastructure for future growth, or have other IT needs, click the button and reach out now.