The Importance of Cybersecurity in the Manufacturing Industry
Category:
Insights
Date:
August 6, 2021
Cybersecurity is more important now than it ever has before. Due to the rapid improvement of technology and the acceleration of remote work practices during COVID-19, more and more industries now operate online.
Each industry carries its own risks when it comes to cybersecurity. It is important to learn about industry-specific safety practices for your company or business.
Cybersecurity in manufacturing is a vital emerging field that you need to know all about, especially as we head into the fourth industrial revolution.
You need to keep your information secure. If you run a manufacturing company, this means products, designs, client information, and employee information.
Keep reading, and we'll tell you how to increase and improve cybersecurity in manufacturing.
As more and more business gets done online, it becomes more important to keep every step of that process secure. Information that was once stored in filing cabinets is now in the cloud...
Online storage is a great resource as it keeps everything easy to find and sort. However, it also makes your information vulnerable to hackers.
As the manufacturing industry moves online, hackers will target it more and more.
According to IT Pro, their 2021 Global Threat Intelligence Report (GTIR) revealed that “the manufacturing, health care, and finance industries saw 300%, 200%, and 53% increases in worldwide attacks, respectively. These top three sectors accounted for a combined 62% of all attacks in 2020, up from just 11% in 2019.”
With that in mind, it is vital that you stay up to date on the cybersecurity trends in your industry. Intellectual property such as your designs, manufacturing process and patents, along with your personal information, depend on it.
Leaving your company unprotected can have more risks than you might think. Not only can your information be compromised, but you can be held responsible for data breaches if client or employee information gets hacked, which eventually could put you out of business due to damaged reputation.
If you are not in compliance with cybersecurity laws, any attack on your business becomes, legally, your responsibility. Failure to comply with cybersecurity laws can result in devastating fines. It can also cause the public to lose their faith in you.
Most countries have their cybersecurity laws listed plainly on government websites so you can always check to make sure that you are staying compliant.
The unique threat that cybercrime poses to the manufacturing industry has to do with the confidentiality of developing products. When your information is compromised, you also risk losing your designs and prototypes. Both of these things are irreplaceable and valuable to your company.
When a hacker gains access to your communications system or design database, they are able to threaten the very lifeblood of your company, including your supply chain, making it extremely difficult to continue operations as normal.
Whether they do this by extortion or simple theft; the result is the same. You lose money, time, ideas, and the trust of your organisation.
If you need proof to get you motivated, don't worry. We'll tell you about just a few recent cyberattacks, some in manufacturing companies, and how they have impacted the targeted companies.
These are just three examples, but we could have listed hundreds. Cyberattacks are more common now than ever before.
In April 2021, drinks giant C&C Group subsidiary shut down IT systems following a security incident.
Despite Bulmers’ IT team reacting quickly, shutting down all IT systems, as per the cybersecurity response plan, the operational impact was astounding. The company was left fulfilling orders manually over phone calls whilst it restored its online capabilities!
The attack left the company with an incredible amount of administrative baggage - reaching out to millions of customers and suppliers of the incident and notifying the relevant authorities, including the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Bulmers has not disclosed the costs associated with the cyberattack (ransomware fees, losses, damages, legal fees etc.) but the fact that they operate in 40 countries indicates that the level of sales opportunities missed out on alone could easily run into the millions.
LimeVPN, a consumer VPN service, was recently hacked by a cybercriminal who gained access to the personal keys of every LimeVPN user. The criminal asked for a $400 bitcoin payment in exchange for the information.
The company could not handle the weight of the attack, and the entire company was forced to shut down.
LimeVPN had almost 70,000 customers, many of those being manufacturing companies using VPNs for remote access service. Now, every single one of those people and companies has to get a new credit card and possibly seek financial compensation.
This kind of cyberattack could harm any company that stores customer information online. If you have any credit card information on file for your customers, you could be open to this kind of hacking attack.
What’s more, LimeVPN may be in legal trouble for not having the security protocols that they advertised.
As a final example, we’ll use Mercedes-Benz USA who admitted, in June 2021, that up to 1,000 customers’ credit card details and driver’s license numbers were accessible for 3 and a half years due to a breach in security on a cloud storage platform.
A spokesperson claimed that the details were “inadvertently made accessible on a cloud storage platform”, after the error had been identified by an external security researcher.
Luckily, there were no dire consequences of this breach and the data has now been moved to secure storage but the issue sparked uncertainty amongst potential customers.
Jumping back to 2017, Mondelez, a global food and beverage company, lost 1,700 servers and 24,000 laptops in an attack committed with encryption malware called NotPetya. The attack permanently damaged production facilities around the globe and included the theft of thousands of user credentials. This impacted the company's ability to complete customer orders, costing $100 million!
Mondelez weren't the only company targeted in the NotPetya attack which is believed to account for $10 billion of damages.
Though cybersecurity is more important than ever before, not every manufacturing company has caught up to the trends. Most companies who suffer from cyberattacks do not increase their budget. Unfortunately, this makes them susceptible to another attack.
You should increase your budget to focus on fighting cybercrime, ideally before you are ever attacked! It is always better to be proactive than reactive.
There are a few vulnerabilities that most manufacturing companies' customers are open to. These include crypto-mining, anonymous VPNs, unsanctioned cloud storage, and malware. The most common security weaknesses that your company may be facing are:
Most manufacturing companies face these weaknesses. The only way to combat them is to make room in your budget for cybersecurity and investing in digital technologies that could detect threats well in advance of the consequences being realised.
Even if you are a smaller manufacturer, you can still be at risk. Regardless of size, you still have information that hackers can use to leverage against you.
That is what is so dangerous about cybercrime; anyone can be a target. As long as you have confidential information on file, which virtually every company does, you are in danger.
You should take a holistic approach to cybersecurity - let's break down some of the basics. When you follow these guidelines, you're guaranteed to keep your company safer.
This is an introduction to the cybersecurity principles you should follow. You should, of course, always consider working with experts in cybersecurity to make sure you are as protected as possible.
For super in-depth information, we recommend checking out a book called "Cybersecurity for Industry 4.0: Analysis for Design and Manufacturing."
It is vital that you discuss cybersecurity with your employees. You should hold regular training seminars and inform your employees of the risks they run if they do not follow proper security procedures.
Any employee that has access to confidential information needs this training. It doesn't matter if they are a receptionist, an intern, an engineer, or a designer.
In order to keep your employees better informed, you need to be aware of new advancements in the field of cybersecurity for manufacturing. You need to attend regular seminars on cybersecurity and consult blogs, online courses, and books on the subject.
When you show your employees that you take security seriously, they will too.
It is vital that you have the right security software to protect the information stored by your company. You have several options for this, and you can use them in combination with each other.
You can get a corporate VPN to protect your company's IP address from hackers. To avoid security breaches like the one that happened with LimeVPN, you should look into the logging habits of your VPN service.
For maximum security, make sure you choose a VPN provider with a no-log policy.
You can also look into colocation hosting, in order to make sure your servers are stored in a secure location. Most colocation hosting services promise extra cybersecurity as a benefit of working with them.
On a more basic level, you should always have multiple-factor identification protocols protecting your company's confidential information.
Another great way to keep your company secure is to work with outside firms. Cybersecurity experts can help you make sure that you are protected by getting an outside perspective on your company. Not every company has the team and the skills to cover this internally, which is another reason to consider external help.
Cybersecurity experts can offer you consultation services, advice, extra security measures, and audits.
When you get audited, you can see from an unbiased, outside perspective how vulnerable your company is. This is the best way to make sure that your security measures actually work.
Don't be afraid to spend some of your security budget on consultation; it may save you money and time in the future.
Security is no longer based on just choosing the best of breed product in each security area. Industrial and Manufacturing organizations are mandated to constantly look at security with an architectural approach to become more effective and improve cost control.
Now that you know all about cybersecurity in manufacturing, get to work protecting your company. The sooner you and your employees adopt modern cybersecurity measures, the safer you will be.
To make sure you're doing everything right, contact cybersecurity experts.
Remember; every manufacturing company is a potential hacking target. Don't be an easy one.
