Companies involved in manufacturing business are said to be more exposed to cyber attacks. This was revealed in a Deloitte study, titled Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI).
According to MAPI, 40 percent of manufacturing firms experienced a cyber attack in last one year. Out of them, 38 percent of them suffered over $1 million in damages.
The Deloitte research found that most of the cyber threats experienced by manufacturers were coming from internal employees through phishing, direct abuse of IT systems, errors and omissions and use of mobile devices.
Topping the list of data concerns among manufacturers was consumer data followed by unauthorized spillage of personal information.
The most astonishing fact revealed by the survey was that 87 percent of manufacturing companies have a disaster recovery plan in place for all data security concerns. But only 37% of them have it in documented and tested state. This clearly means that companies are either ignoring a data continuity plan in the event of a disaster or showing a blind eye towards the whole of business continuity.
By having a data continuity plan, users can shift to a different database when a cyber attack takes place on their on-premises database. This database can be located on a cloud platform and usually revives the data access within the minimal time after the disaster.
In the case of a ransomware attack, the CTO’s can avoid paying ransom for the locked files in their database due to the presence of duplicate data on a different platform. By keeping on or off premises data in an encrypted form, users can avoid hackers having direct access to their data in data spill instances.
Deloitte’s Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation study opened up the fact that manufacturing firms were facing risk from 6 key areas which are- executive and board engagement, intellectual property, industrial controlled systems, connected products, industrial ecosystem, talent and human capital.
