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No industry is safe from the growing threat of cybercrime, but the manufacturing sector is taking the hardest hit. It has experienced the most dramatic rise in the financial fallout from data breaches, with an average increase of $ 830,000 per year. The problem becomes even more critical when you consider that downtime is one of the most expensive results of a cyber incident. A recent ABB survey found that unexpected outages can reach nearly $ 125,000 in losses for every hour they persist. It’ s proof that the ability to recover from cyberattacks must be a central focus of any cyber‐resilience plan.
As manufacturing plants and infrastructure become increasingly digitized, the onceclear boundary between information technology( IT) and operational technology( OT) is fading. The battlefield now spans the entire organization, not just data centers or control rooms. Staying ahead requires knowing the risks, guarding against them, and keeping defenses sharp through regular reviews and tests.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link
Given today’ s hyperconnected factories, attackers don’ t need to compromise an entire system. Identifying and breaching a single weak spot can be enough to infiltrate a plant. That’ s why the traditional approach of relying on a fortified perimeter is falling out of step with modern threats. Firewalls alone can’ t fully defend a mesh of interconnected devices and networks.
Real resilience now demands security embedded into the equipment itself. Take industrial variable speed drives( VSDs) as an example. These devices occupy the intersection between the physical and the digital, responsible for motor control while sharing data across systems. If
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