Before the coronavirus outbreak, many manufacturers were moving away from legacy systems and going digital. The impact of the pandemic caused many companies to accelerate their plans.
As more employees began working remotely, new systems and solutions were implemented. They often lacked rigorous testing to ensure safety.
As a result, many manufacturing companies are more vulnerable to cyberattacks than they were 2 years ago. These companies must increase their cybersecurity efforts to protect against threats.
Discover some common cyberattacks on manufacturers and methods to increase your company’s cybersecurity.
Common Manufacturing Cyberattacks
- Phishing attacks: Emails appear to come from the company or an organization likely to do business with it. An employee clicks a link and provides hackers with an entry point into the network. The hackers invisibly move through the network to gain information to complete an attack.
- Ransomware attacks: Malware encrypts files on a network. The files remain unusable until the hackers’ demands are met. The hackers may threaten to sell or leak confidential information if a ransom is not paid. Or, they might make the network unusable until a ransom is paid.
- Internal breaches: Employees or other personnel with access to the company use their knowledge or credentials to steal sensitive data. Typical motives include financial gain, anger, or dissatisfaction with the business.
Methods to Increase Cybersecurity
Employees at every level of the organization must actively promote cybersecurity.
- This advocacy begins at the top and works its way down.
- Any employee can inadvertently cause a breach in cybersecurity.
- Everyone must be actively involved in the cybersecurity process.
Conduct a thorough assessment of what the company’s cybersecurity is like.
- Include the risks related to onsite and remote employees, legacy systems, third parties, and related issues.
- Partner with a professional cybersecurity company to gain the deepest insight into your situation.
- The company’s expert knowledge, experience, and capabilities are far greater and more effective than your company’s.
Secure, patch, and plug the system vulnerabilities uncovered.
- Educate and train employees to find potential ransomware, phishing, and social engineering attempts.
- Regularly maintain the activities and training to increase your company’s cybersecurity.
- Continuously monitoring your systems can identify and resolve issues as quickly as possible.
Maintain strategic partnerships with cybersecurity specialists.
- Minimize business disruption and downtime.
- Increase the odds of recovering data in case of a ransomware attack.
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