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When compliance looks good on paper but fails on the factory floor. By Christina Hoefer
Manufacturers are under growing pressure to demonstrate cybersecurity maturity. Regulations such as NIS2, industry frameworks like IEC 62443, and increasing supply chain scrutiny mean that security programs must now prove both operational resilience and regulatory compliance.
Yet despite significant investment, many manufacturers still struggle to translate cybersecurity activity into measurable improvements in risk reduction – even when all compliance boxes are checked. In practice, resilience depends less on preventing every incident and more on being able to detect, act, and contain the blast radius to limit downtime as much as possible.
The issue is rarely a lack of tools or frameworks, but a structural challenge. Most organizations already have a broad security stack in place, often consisting of fragmented visibility tools spanning IT and, increasingly, operational technology( OT), alongside separate perimeter and endpoint security solutions. As a result, many security programs remain structurally focused on vulnerability management and periodic compliance exercises rather than continuous risk management.
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