Nearly half of Britain’s manufacturers (42%) have been a victim of cyber-crime over the last 12 months according to new research, Cyber Security: UK manufacturing, published today by Make UK, the manufacturers’ organisation and BlackBerry Limited. Over a quarter of respondents (26%) reported substantial financial loss as the result of an attack, with losses ranging from £50,000 to £250,000.
As businesses adopt more digital technologies, their exposure to cybersecurity risks increases. Some 95% say cybersecurity measures are necessary for their company, while two thirds said the importance of cybersecurity has increased in the last 12 months. Worryingly, the majority (54%) decided not to take any further cybersecurity action despite adopting new technologies to boost production.
UK manufacturers face a battery of cybersecurity risks, ranging from simple employee error to complex targeted attacks. The top three cybersecurity vulnerabilities were identified as maintaining legacy IT (45%), a lack of cyber skills within the company (38%), and providing access to third parties for monitoring and maintenance (33%). The research also found that production stoppages were the most common result of a cyberattack (65%), with reputational damage ranking second (43%).
Adoption of the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) is shown to be the biggest driver behind cybersecurity adoption for one in three organisations (30%). These new IoT processes, such as automated sensors driving efficiencies, sit at the heart of manufacturing production and are seen as business-critical functions. However, just over a third (37%) say that concerns about cyber vulnerability have prevented the introduction of new connected technologies into their organisation, hampering potential productivity gains and holding companies back from growth.
Targeted attacks are the most common, with smaller companies often the most vulnerable yet many offering no cybersecurity training to staff. 62% of manufacturers now have a formal cybersecurity procedure in place in the event of an incident, up 11% on last year’s figures with the same number giving a senior manager responsibility for cyber security. More than half (58%) have escalated this responsibility to board level.
SOURCE: PR Newswire