Data breaches and cyberattacks are occurrences that most small to medium-sized manufacturers think “won’t happen to me.” Yet, according to the Verizon 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, 43 percent of all cyberattacks are conducted against small businesses. If that doesn’t grab your attention, consider this fact: Manufacturing ranked fourth in the number of cyberattacks by industry, topped only by the public administration, information and finance industries.
Denial of service, an interruption in an authorized user’s access to a computer network, had the most attacks in the manufacturing industry with ransomware a close second. Ninety-six percent of cyberattacks in the manufacturing sector were motivated by money.
Clearly, the manufacturing industry is under siege from highly skilled cyber hackers that are constantly developing new ways to achieve successful data breaches that yield substantial amounts of money. Yet, hackers still pursue small and medium-sized manufacturers for a variety of reasons. Let’s take a look at why manufacturers receive so much attention from hackers and face higher risks. You can also discover steps to take to protect your data, finances and business from individuals that could cause your business harm.
What is a cyberattack?
Cyberattacks are a malicious disruption of a company’s systems and network. Hackers use harmful code to compromise the computer system so they can steal or hold data hostage. They have many different types of cyberattacks to deploy. These include:
- Ransomware, identity theft, fraud and extortion
- Malware, phishing, spamming, spoofing, spyware, trojans and viruses
- Stolen hardware, such as laptops and mobile devices
- Intellectual property theft or unauthorized access
- Denial of service attacks
- Breach of access and “password sniffing”
- System infiltration and website defacement
- Instant messaging abuse
The type of attack deployed depends on what the hacker is seeking. Ransomware attacks are motivated purely by money. Identity theft, fraud and extortion attacks seek money, but often the hacker is looking for sensitive data that could lead to more successful data breaches and a higher financial return. Regardless of the type, cyberattacks involve a clandestine effort to gain undetected access to your data and digital assets, thereby putting the hacker in control of your company’s systems.
Small and medium-sized manufacturers are targeted by hackers for most of the same reasons as other small businesses. The primary attraction is that they don’t have the technology or resources to fend off cyberattacks that larger companies do. Most can’t afford the best protections or trained cybersecurity personnel to protect their systems and data. Many fail to adequately train their employees on how to prevent phishing and other types of attacks that take advantage of naive individuals that don’t respond to emails with a careful eye.
Hackers understand the vulnerability of manufacturers and target their businesses accordingly. If hackers fail to penetrate a targeted manufacturer, they typically move on to the next small manufacturing company that has its guard down.
Even though small to mid-sized manufacturers lack the financial assets of larger enterprises, ransomware is still a favorite of hackers because manufacturers often pay the ransoms. Small cyberattacks can have large financial and data repercussions, and the larger the extent of the breach, the more likely the manufacturer will pay the ransom. Cyberattacks can also create devastating damage by targeting critical plant equipment. And supply chain disruptions can create ripple effects that shut down production lines for several days or more, thereby throwing production goals and distribution targets into disarray and confusion.
Data breach popularity
A data breach is defined as a security incident in which unauthorized intruders access sensitive or confidential information. The information can include personal data, such as social security numbers, bank account numbers, healthcare data, corporate data from customer records, intellectual property and financial information. Data breach and cyberattack are often considered equivalent terms; however, data breach refers only to security breaches in which someone gains unauthorized access to data. Hackers acquire unauthorized access to data in many ways, including:
- Weak and stolen credentials
- Backdoor and application vulnerabilities
- Malware
- Social engineering
- Excessive permissions
- Ransomware
- Denial of service attacks
- Improper configuration and exposure via application programming interface (API)
Data breaches typically provide the fuel for ransomware attacks that result
in large payments from the manufacturer. However, they can also yield extremely valuable information that opens the door for the hacker to hold other companies or customers at ransom.
Minimize the damage
Keeping cyberattack damage to a minimum requires your quick response with a plan of action worked out in advance. Be prepared to implement these six steps as soon as possible.
- Identify the attack: Identifying the type of attack will help you determine its severity and the measures needed to mitigate the damage. Some common types of cyberattacks include ransomware, phishing, denial of service and malware.
- Isolate the affected systems: Once you’ve identified the type of attack, disconnect the affected systems from the internet and your internal network to prevent the attack from spreading to other systems in your network. Complex networks may require more sophisticated isolation measures.
- Contain the attack: Determine the scope of the attack by identifying the systems and data that have been compromised. Identify any vulnerabilities that may have been exploited to carry out the attack.
- Notify internal and external affected parties: Potentially affected parties include your senior management, IT department, and third-party vendors and service providers. Contact law enforcement officials if evidence of criminal activity exists.
- Recover and restore systems and data: Use backups to bring systems and applications up to date with the latest security patches. Conduct a comprehensive review of your security policies and procedures to identify weak points in your security infrastructure.
- Learn from the attack: The final step involves researching and analyzing the attack to uncover any gaps in your security technology and procedures. Provide all employees with hands-on training for recognizing and responding to cyberattacks. Bring your systems and data back up as quickly as possible while minimizing the damage in the process.
Protect your shop
No defense is perfect, but implementing these 12 steps can significantly reduce the odds that hackers will be able to penetrate your data and systems.
1. Employee awareness and training: Hackers frequently send phony emails expecting some unaware user will take the bait. These often seem legitimate to untrained employees, making it easy to fall into the hacker’s trap. Train your employees to always:
- Check links before clicking them
- Check email addresses from received emails
- Use common sense before sending sensitive information
- If an email request seems odd or suspicious, call the person and verify the source and the request
2. Use patch management: Hackers are professionals at exploiting system weaknesses to gain access to your network. Patch management is a process of applying updates to software, drivers and firmware to protect against vulnerabilities. Designed to manage all your software and system updates, patch management also boosts productivity by ensuring optimal operating performance of your systems.
3. Protect all your endpoints: Endpoints consist of desktop computers, mobile devices, servers, embedded devices and other physical devices that connect to and exchange information with a computer network. They also provide access paths to security threats, but can be protected with endpoint protection software and anti-virus programs running on all computer systems.
4. Build a firewall: With so many sophisticated data breaching techniques, protecting your network with a firewall is essential. A computer network security system that restricts internet traffic within a private network, a firewall provides a highly effective defense against cyberattacks.
5. Use of two-factor authentication: Two-factor authentication is an identity and access management security method that requires two forms of identification to access data and resources. Enforce it on email and your other commonly accessed applications.
6. Perform penetration testing on systems: Engage an independent cybersecurity company once a year to perform penetration testing on all internal systems to identify vulnerabilities or points that need better protection.
7. Back up your data in remote locations: Data hacks of full backups can result in significant downtime, loss of data and devastating financial loss. Back up data on a regular basis and store it in different locations in case your onsite backups are compromised.
8. Control physical access to your systems: Without a reliable perimeter security system, someone could walk into your facility and infect a file or gain access to your entire network by inserting a hardware key that identifies an authorized user. Be very careful about who has access to your systems and how they gain entry.
9. Don’t overlook WiFi security: With thousands of WiFi-enabled devices in the world, the risk is any device can get infected by connecting to a network. An infected device that is connected to your network puts your entire network at risk. Securing your WiFi is a vital safety feature for your systems.
10. Use separate personal login accounts for all employees: Every employee needs their own login for every application and program they use. Ensuring every staff member has separate logins helps reduce the number of potential attacks. Users should log in only once a day with their own personal set of logins.
11. Have strict access management: Allowing employees to install software on business-owned devices could compromise your systems. Reduce risk by using managed administrative rights to prevent staff from installing or even accessing certain data on your network.
12. Use a different password setup for each application: Never assign the same password setup for different applications. If hackers discover the password, it could provide access to any application that is used. Using different password setups and changing them often will sustain high protection levels against external and internal threats. This can be made easier by using a password manager program so the user doesn’t have to remember every single password.
Above all, use an experienced IT expert to keep your security infrastructure up to date
with new technologies so it can function as it should. At Global Shop Solutions, growing numbers of our manufacturing customers are migrating to cloud ERP for the security of having their software and data securely stored on offsite servers.
