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Until recently , manufacturing lagged behind other industries in embracing a cloud-first philosophy . But a new report shows that the manufacturing sector is now closing that gap when it comes to adoption of cloud applications . Findings from the Netskope Threat Labs Report for Manufacturing show that from June 2022 to May 2023 , the number of manufacturing users uploading to cloud apps increased by 27 percent to 58 percent , and a whopping 94 percent of manufacturing users downloaded from the cloud . Over the same period , the number of different applications each manufacturing user interacted with also increased ( from 13 to 20 ).
Microsoft OneDrive proved to be the most popular app overall , used by 43 percent of manufacturing workers on an average day . Google ’ s suite of applications was also more popular among manufacturing organizations than in other industries — especially Google Meet for online video calls and conferencing . But while cloud applications are clearly helping manufacturers improve productivity and enable a growing demand for hybrid workforces , this report also reveals that these cloud-based tools are simultaneously introducing new risk exposures to sophisticated threats like malware and ransomware . To take it a step further , the findings point to a more precise and actionable issue - that the existing defenses in manufacturing environments needed to counter these kinds of persistent cyberattacks appear to be insufficient .
Cloud app adoption brings new challenges for manufacturers
Netskope ’ s Threat Labs Report shows that greater overall use of cloud apps in manufacturing has also increased the instances of application abuse - as seen by the sharp rise in the number of attacks exploiting cloud applications . Malware delivered to manufacturers via tools like OneDrive , Sharepoint , and GitHub increased from 32 percent to 66 percent over the 12-month review period . Cloud applications allow attackers to evade old-fashioned security controls that still rely primarily on domain block lists and URL filtering . These oldfashioned security controls often simply do not inspect cloud traffic at all .
The most common types of malware detected in manufacturing over the reporting period were Trojans , which attackers use to gain an initial foothold and then deliver other types of malware ( e . g ., infostealers , Remote Access Trojans , backdoors , ransomware ). The second most common type of malware detected were file-based exploits , which include documents used to exploit known vulnerabilities . Downloaders are another common tool used by malicious actors . Similar to Trojans , downloaders are used to deliver other types of malware once they make it inside a manufacturing network .
Why a zero trust approach is the way to go
Why are these threats causing particular problems for the manufacturing sector ? It comes down to a matter of trust . Traditional operational technology ( OT ) systems used in manufacturing were typically designed to implicitly trust everything within their environments because they were safely ‘ air-
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