Why Manufacturing Cybersecurity Protects the Global Economy
The manufacturing and industrial sectors are the foundation of the world's economy. Simply put, this sector is all about making the physical products we use every day. It turns raw materials into finished goods, from the cars we drive and the phones we use, to the food we eat, and the clothes we wear.
Globally, this sector is a huge economic driver, with a total market value of around $16.7 trillion USD in 2024. At a national level, it is essential for growth. For example, manufacturing accounts for nearly 18% of Germany's GDP. For the United States, it is around 10%, while for China, it is nearly 25%.
Protecting manufacturing against cyberthreats and production downtime is therefore critical for ensuring global economic stability, national competitiveness, and the continuous flow of goods that sustain everyday life.
Cybersecurity for Manufacturing Is More Important Than Ever
As manufacturing becomes smarter with new technology (a trend called Industry 4.0), it has also become a top target for cyberattacks. The same tools that make factories more efficient also create new security risks. Cyberattacks are no longer a small risk; they are a major threat to business operations. A successful cyberattack can lead to serious consequences, including:
- Production Downtime: An attack like ransomware can shut down a factory floor. This can cost thousands or even millions of dollars for every hour of downtime.
- Supply Chain Disruption: Production downtime can lead to failed deliveries and a loss of trust with business partners who expect reliability and timely fulfillment.
- Intellectual Property (IP) Theft: Hackers can steal confidential product designs and business plans, which can then be sold or publicly exposed. This loss of ideas can destroy a company's ability to compete in the market.
- Safety Hazards: Attacks on industrial control systems (ICS) can make machines behave incorrectly, which could create unsafe conditions for workers and cause accidents.
Because the stakes are so high, manufacturers can no longer afford to wait for an attack to happen before taking action. They need a proactive security strategy that is active 24/7.
This is why a service like Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is so beneficial.
This article outlines the key cybersecurity challenges facing manufacturing companies and highlights how Sangfor Athena MDR provides the specialized, always-on protection they need to stay safe from modern cyber threats.
Key Manufacturing Cybersecurity Challenges and Risks
To build true cyber resilience, it's essential to understand the risks and challenges facing the manufacturing industry. Below are some of the key issues that manufacturers and industrial organizations are confronting around the world:
1. The High Cost of Cyber Disruption in Manufacturing
Manufacturing operations rely on tightly coordinated schedules, from just-in-time supply chains to continuous production lines. Operational downtime can be highly disruptive, with incidents lasting an average of 12 days and, in some cases, extending up to 129 days, resulting in costs of up to 1.9 million USD per day. For maximum disruption, adversaries often target industry systems such as SCADA/SIP (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition/Site Information Processing), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and industrial control systems (ICS).
In addition, many manufacturers possess valuable intellectual property, including proprietary designs, formulas, and industrial processes, representing billions in potential losses.
Threat actors recognize both the financial and strategic significance of these assets and exploit them to maximize disruption, expecting victims to prioritize the rapid restoration of operations and the protection of sensitive trade secrets. This strategy is reflected in the fact that ransomware alone accounted for 47% of all breaches in the manufacturing sector in 2024.
2. Legacy & Unpatched Industrial Systems
Many manufacturers still operate legacy IT and OT systems, including outdated versions of Windows, PLCs, and SCADA platforms, which are often difficult or impossible to patch. Studies indicate that a significant portion of these systems contains critical unpatched vulnerabilities. For example, according to Arimis' 2023 research, 56% of engineering workstations and 41% of PLCs have at least one unpatched, critical-severity CVE. In addition, in the first half of 2023, nearly 34% of reported industrial control system vulnerabilities currently have no available patch or remediation.
3. Integrated Industrial Supply Chains
Manufacturers rely on a broad network of third-party suppliers and partners, many of whom are granted access to internal systems and have systems tightly integrated with the manufacturer's operations. Cybercriminals exploit this by targeting third parties with weaker security to gain direct entry into the organization's network. Because these attacks originate from trusted parties, they often appear legitimate and can bypass defenses. In fact, around 20% of attacks in the manufacturing sector are traced back to supplier vulnerabilities.
4. Cybersecurity Skills Shortage
Manufacturers face significant challenges due to a global shortage of qualified cybersecurity professionals, which makes it difficult to hire experienced staff at competitive rates. According to the 2024 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study, there are an estimated 4.8 million unfilled cybersecurity roles worldwide, a 19% year-over-year increase. The shortage is particularly acute in manufacturing, where there is a critical lack of professionals with expertise in ICS and OT. These gaps make it difficult for manufacturers to detect threats quickly and respond effectively, increasing the risk of operational disruption.
5. Low Cybersecurity Budget Priority
Manufacturing companies often underinvest in cybersecurity, mainly due to the high capital requirements of modernizing legacy equipment and redesigning production lines. Enhancing cybersecurity controls is given lower priority in favor of immediate production goals. Despite the growing threat landscape, manufacturers generally allocate only 6–7% of their total IT budgets to cybersecurity in 2025— a moderate level compared with other high-risk sectors such as finance or healthcare. This creates a mismatch between the sector's cybersecurity investment and risk exposure.
High-Profile Cyberattacks in the Manufacturing Industry
1. Jaguar Land Rover Ransomware Disruption (September 2025)
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), the UK's largest automaker, was hit by a ransomware attack carried out by the group Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters. The attack forced the shutdown of production facilities across the UK and Slovakia, disrupting vehicle manufacturing and dealership operations and resulting in an estimated daily profit loss of around £5 million. The production line was heavily impacted, with factory staff instructed to remain at home for several days.
2. Xepa-Soul Pattinson (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd (February 2025)
A leading pharmaceutical manufacturer was compromised by Lynx ransomware, resulting in the theft of sensitive data, including operational documents, financial records, contractual agreements, and patent filings. The exfiltrated data was published on the dark web, with analysts estimating losses in the hundreds of millions and warning of potential long-term business impacts, as competitors could catch up within 12 months due to the leaked patent documents.
3. Toyota Supply Chain Disruption (March 2022)
Toyota, one of the world's largest automakers, suffered a cyberattack on a key component supplier. The incident forced production at its Japanese factories to halt for 24 hours, resulting in over 13,000 vehicles not being produced. The disruption highlights the operational and supply chain risks that cyberattacks pose to the automotive industry.
Build a Secure Manufacturing Future with Sangfor Athena MDR
Sangfor Athena MDR is a comprehensive threat detection and response service designed for industries such as manufacturing, where business continuity, safety, and intellectual property are on the line.
By combining 24/7 expert monitoring, AI-driven threat detection, and fast incident response, Athena MDR ensures that attacks such as ransomware, supply chain breaches, and insider threats are stopped before they disrupt production and other critical business functions.
For manufacturers struggling with little to no dedicated IT security staff, Athena MDR closes critical security gaps that traditional tools cannot. It delivers measurable protection with faster deployment and at a lower cost than building in-house capabilities. The result: stronger resilience, reduced financial and operational risk, and the confidence to continue innovation and core business operations without fear of cyber disruption.
How Athena MDR Addresses Manufacturing's Cybersecurity Challenges
Sangfor Athena MDR addresses the key security challenges outlined above by combining advanced technology with 24/7/365 human expertise, shifting your security posture from reactive to proactive and resilient.
1. Countering the High Cost of Disruption
Stops Threats Fast, Anytime: Accuracy and speed are key to countering today's sophisticated cyber threats. Athena MDR uses state-of-the-art technologies, including GenAI, to detect and analyze attack patterns. The Athena MDR team ensures that alerts of all severities, not just high-severity alerts, are reviewed and prioritized. This level of coverage leaves no blind spots for advanced tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) hidden in unreviewed alerts. When a threat is verified, our analysts respond within minutes to prevent costly downtime.
Protects Valuable IP: We take the time to understand your operations and most critical assets, ensuring they are prioritized whenever a threat is detected.
2. Protecting Legacy & Unpatched Industrial Systems
AI-driven Anomaly-based Detection: For legacy IT and OT systems that don't support patching or endpoint protection, our service enables threat detection by monitoring network traffic using AI/ML to identify suspicious patterns associated with attack behaviors. By learning the normal communication patterns of industrial systems, which tend to be highly standardized and repetitive, our network monitoring can quickly and accurately detect anomalous activity, enabling a fast and effective response.
Inventory of Vulnerable Assets: Before starting the service, we understand and inventory the assets most at risk to focus monitoring and remediation efforts. Threat vulnerabilities are also periodically monitored, and you are notified when our security experts identify relevant and severe findings, such as outdated web browsers or other applications in the assets we cover.
3. Securing the Manufacturing Supply Chain
Provides Full Visibility: Leveraging the same anomaly-based detection principles, we monitor all network traffic between your organization and third parties to quickly identify abnormal behavior and signs of a compromise.
Blocks Compromised Connections: Our analysts detect and block attacks that try to infiltrate your network, even those coming from a trusted partner's source location.
4. Solving the Cybersecurity Skills Gap
On-Demand Expertise: You get 24/7 access to our team of security experts, eliminating the immense cost and challenge of hiring an in-house team. Additionally, Athena MDR complements larger enterprises that already have an IT security team by taking over specific security functions (such as reviewing and triaging alerts) and/or assets (such as business-critical and industrial control systems). This allows your internal IT security team to focus on more business-critical and other operational tasks like configuring IT assets, conducting audits, attending business meetings, and more.
Deep Manufacturing Experience: Athena MDR has extensive experience serving manufacturing customers, including those in the semiconductor, automotive, and food industries. This experience gives us a strong understanding of the unique management systems and operational environments in manufacturing settings. Our service allocates analysts and Customer Success Managers (CSMs) with prior experience in manufacturing to ensure tailored threat monitoring, rapid incident response, and practical guidance aligned with the operational realities of your facilities.
5. Aligning Security with Manufacturing Budgets
Lowers Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Athena MDR provides enterprise-level security as a predictable OpEx, helping you avoid the large upfront CapEx of building an in-house SOC. Our service has proven to save, on average, 80% of SecOps cost per year compared to building and maintaining your own internal SOC, which also takes years to fully mature.
Delivers Clear ROI: By preventing a single major breach, Athena MDR provides a clear return on investment by protecting your revenue and ensuring business continuity. The service costs only a small fraction compared to the potential millions of dollars in cyberattack damages and penalties, as highlighted in IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025. Sangfor's MDR TCO Calculator further shows that, for every $1 spent on the MDR service, companies can potentially avoid $166 in breach-related costs.
Conclusion
As the manufacturing industry continues to evolve through Industry 4.0, the need for resilient, proactive cybersecurity has never been more urgent. From legacy systems and supply chain vulnerabilities to rising ransomware attacks and a global shortage of skilled professionals, the risks are clear — and growing. Manufacturers can no longer afford reactive or fragmented defenses that leave critical operations exposed.
Sangfor Athena MDR delivers the expertise, technology, and around-the-clock protection manufacturers need to safeguard production, intellectual property, and business continuity. By combining AI-driven threat detection with 24/7 human-led monitoring and rapid incident response, Athena MDR transforms cybersecurity from a cost center into a strategic enabler of operational excellence.
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Data Sources of the Graph:
1. Dragos OT Cybersecurity Year in Review, 2025.
2. Manufacturing Cybersecurity Challenges Study, 2024, Emily Uwemedimo.
3. Securing American Competitiveness, 2025, Jamie Friedman.
4. IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, 2025.
