Verizon Enterprise Solutions (VES) has released its annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), widely considered the most authoritative source on data breaches and cybersecurity. Having analysed cross-industry data from nearly 80,000 reported security incidents across 61 countries, Verizon has that found that denial of service (DoS) and cyber-espionage attacks account for two-thirds of all incidents in the manufacturing sector.
DoS attacks continue to dominate the manufacturing industry at 34 per cent of security incidents compared to an all–industry average of 4 per cent, and are designed to bring down systems and networks.
More worryingly, they have the potential to bring down critical systems while bringing productivity to a standstill, damaging customer and partner relationships, and ultimately compromising a company’s reputation and bottom line.
Coupled with this, Verizon’s DBIR claimed that an additional that one-third of all security incidents faced by the manufacturing sector are attributed to cyber-espionage.
This, said the company, is of particular concern for manufacturers who hold intellectual property that is attractive to attackers including competitors that might want their proprietary product information, or state-affiliated attackers that could target operations in areas such as aerospace or defence in search of sensitive trade or national secrets.