Manufacturers See Increase in Cyberattacks

The manufacturing sector is now one of the most frequently hacked industries, second only to healthcare, a new report says.

In the new Cyber Security Intelligence Index released by IBM X-Force Research, manufacturing ranked above financial institutions as a target for hackers. Manufacturing includes automotive, electronics, textile, and pharmaceutical companies. Automotive manufacturers were the top targeted manufacturing sub-industry in 2015. Chemical manufacturers were the second-most targeted sub-industry.

Many attackers are financially motivated and therefore are more likely to go after corporate networks where they could steal potentially valuable intellectual property or sensitive information, says John Kuhn, senior threat researcher with IBM X-Force.

Many manufacturing companies are behind the curve in security because they have not been held to compliance standards like banks and healthcare.

The report offers these defensive strategies:

• Conduct an annual IT risk assessment to properly understand where threats originate;
• Perform annual penetration tests to simulate the threat of someone trying to break into your organization’s network; and
• Conduct ongoing vulnerability scanning to help the organization stay up-to-date with new threats.

Source: Darkreading.com