Cyberattacks are inevitable, and resilience determines how well your business survives. IBM reports that manufacturing has been the most-targeted industry for four consecutive years, elevating it to a board-level risk. Manufacturers are facing escalating ransomware attacks and costly downtime that threaten their revenue, production schedules, and customer relationships.
Rather than trying to block every breach, manufacturing leaders are building cyber resilience programs that detect intrusions early, contain threats across IT and OT, and restore production quickly to keep operations running and contracts secure.
This article highlights the top attack trends affecting the manufacturing sector, explains how compliance frameworks strengthen security programs, outlines the core components of resilience, and shows how Keystone helps you prepare, detect, and recover with confidence.
Key takeaways
- Prioritize protection to maintain uninterrupted production lines and secure critical assets.
- Quantify cyber risk in financial terms to justify and defend resilience investments.
- Mitigate exposure to cybercriminals with segmentation, privileged-access controls, and continuous monitoring.
- Execute quarterly backup tests and tabletop initiatives to ensure response is tested and auditable.
- Position your manufacturing organization as an industry leader by meeting NIST 800-171 and CMMC requirements.
Define cyber resilience in manufacturing
Cyber resilience isn’t just a security term; it’s a business capability. It defines how well your plant can withstand cyber threats and maintain production, even when systems are under attack.
Go beyond cybersecurity, focus on recovery and continuity
Traditional cybersecurity aims to block intrusions, patch vulnerabilities, and prevent attackers from gaining access. Attackers still breach even the best-protected networks. Cyber resilience shifts the focus to what happens next: how quickly you can detect an event, contain it, and return to safe operations.
Set RTOs and RPOs for each production line. Develop a layered IT disaster recovery plan that includes offline backups and clear points for transitioning to manual workarounds.
This proactive approach minimizes disruptions and reduces the financial impact when incidents occur.
Protect IT and OT systems together
Manufacturers manage two interdependent environments: information technology for business functions and operational technology (OT) for plant-floor control. OT assets such as ICS, PLCs, and HMIs often run on legacy systems that are difficult to patch, creating exploitable vulnerabilities.
To reduce risk, start with a comprehensive asset inventory that covers both IT and OT. Enforce segmentation between networks, implement strong authentication for remote and privileged access, and monitor connectivity for abnormal patterns, like unexpected data flows between ICS devices.
These steps reduce the attack surface and provide your team with time to respond before threats impact production.
Understand the threat landscape for manufacturers
Knowing what you’re up against is the first step toward building resilience. Manufacturers face unique risks from ransomware that can halt production and supply chain weaknesses that invite breaches, each of which requires a targeted response.
Stop ransomware on production lines
Ransomware remains the leading threat to manufacturers, accounting for 75% of system-intrusion breaches reported by Verizon. Every hour of halted production is costly, and Aberdeen estimates unplanned downtime can reach $260,000 per hour, making fast containment essential.
Prepare by keeping offline, immutable backups of engineering and production systems, and test them regularly. Document procedures to quickly isolate compromised HMIs or controllers. Rapid containment can prevent a localized incident from escalating into a complete plant shutdown.
Reduce supply chain vulnerabilities
Attackers now target suppliers as entry points into manufacturer networks. The FBI’s IC3 reported $16.6 billion in cybercrime losses in 2024, a 30% increase from 2023, with much of the rise attributed to compromised vendors and business email compromise (BEC) scams.
Strengthen defenses by running vendor risk assessments, requiring MFA for all third-party providers, and auditing remote access connections. Build security clauses into contracts and ensure vendors agree to share incident data in the event of a breach, making them part of your broader cyber resilience program.
Meet compliance and regulatory requirements
Frameworks such as NIST 800-171 and the Department of Defense’s CMMC establish clear standards for protecting sensitive data. Adopting these frameworks, even if you don’t handle defense contracts, can streamline audits, reduce penalties, and improve overall risk management.
Treat compliance as a competitive advantage: robust access controls, encrypted data, and documented incident response plans protect your reputation and maintain strong customer relationships.
Build the core components of cyber resilience
True resilience comes from an integrated approach: detection, response, and recovery working in concert. Strengthening each layer minimizes attacker dwell time and keeps production moving even under pressure.
Detect with 24/7 monitoring and threat intelligence
You can’t respond to what you don’t see. Implement real-time SIEM monitoring that aggregates logs from firewalls, servers, and endpoints across both IT and OT environments: Automate alert triage and enrichment to enable analysts to focus on the highest-risk events. Continuously monitor for leaked credentials, unauthorized connectivity, or policy drift between segmented networks to ensure security and compliance.
A well-tuned detection program reduces time to identify threats and creates a solid foundation for faster response, something many manufacturers partner with MSPs like Keystone to implement and maintain.
Respond with incident playbooks for OT
Develop OT-specific incident response playbooks that define decision authority, evidence collection procedures, and communication protocols. Conduct quarterly tabletop exercises that simulate phishing, supply chain compromise, and ransomware scenarios to test preparedness and response capabilities. Keep offline runbooks available for scenarios where directory services or network access are degraded.
Practiced response playbooks turn an uncontrolled cyber incident into a predictable, time-bounded process, something Keystone can help design, test, and refine.
Recover with backups and continuity plans
Recovery is where resilience proves its value. Maintain immutable, offline backups of critical applications and industrial control systems, and verify restores through quarterly tests. Document the precise sequence for bringing production lines and ERP systems back online to avoid unplanned bottlenecks. Prepare communication templates for customers and suppliers to maintain confidence during disruptions.
The objective is clear: compress recovery windows from days to hours. Keystone and other managed service providers often play a crucial role in orchestrating recovery and ensuring that your plans remain aligned with evolving business needs.
Show why resilience beats prevention alone
Even the strongest perimeter cannot stop every attack. Combining protection with proven recovery capabilities turns a potential crisis into a manageable event.
Assume security controls will fail
Even well-designed security programs can be bypassed, and the risk is magnified for manufacturers operating as part of the nation’s critical infrastructure. Effective risk management plans for failure involve layering controls, regularly validating them, and embedding recovery into every system, allowing operations to resume quickly after an incident.
Cut downtime costs with faster recovery
IBM estimates that the average industrial data breach costs $5.56 million, with 199 days to identify and 73 days to contain the breach. Those timelines are too long for manufacturers facing strict delivery schedules.
Reducing mean time to recovery (MTTR) through better detection, rehearsed responses, and pre-planned recovery can cut costs dramatically, making it one of the clearest ROI arguments for a structured resilience program.
Protect trust with partners and customers
Manufacturers are critical links in global supply chains. Proving that your organization can recover quickly safeguards intellectual property, satisfies auditor requirements, and maintains key supplier relationships. Showing preparedness gives you an edge when customers choose reliable partners.
Leverage Keystone’s expertise in resilience
Building resilience requires continuous monitoring, rehearsed response, and tested recovery, and Keystone helps manufacturers put all three into practice with measurable results.
Get proactive monitoring and detection
Keystone delivers 24/7 monitoring across IT and OT environments, tuned to the unique traffic patterns of manufacturing networks. Their clients consistently achieve detection times that are well below the global 11-day median dwell time, enabling earlier containment and minimizing production impact.
Use OT-specific response playbooks
Keystone designs and validates OT-focused response playbooks that define stakeholder roles, trigger segmentation steps to isolate affected systems, and guide safe line restarts. With predefined processes, your team can execute a consistent, controlled response that limits risk and accelerates recovery.
Strengthen business continuity
Keystone supports quarterly restore testing, supplier partnerships to validate remote access controls, and structured backup lifecycle management. These efforts ensure recovery procedures are documented, verified, and ready for immediate execution when needed.
Prepare, detect, and recover
Manufacturers that invest in cyber resilience reduce risk, minimize costly downtime, and protect customer trust even during security incidents. With continuous monitoring, tested response playbooks, and reliable recovery processes, you can maintain operations and ensure compliance.
Schedule a cyber resilience readiness assessment with Keystone today to mitigate threats, expedite recovery, and protect your reputation.
FAQs
How does the manufacturing ecosystem affect cyber risk?
Your manufacturing ecosystem spans suppliers, logistics partners, and technology providers, and each connection is a potential attack path. A single compromised vendor can halt production or expose sensitive data. Requiring vendors to meet NIST 800-171 controls and share incident response plans reduces cascading disruptions.
What role does IoT play in manufacturing security?
IoT adoption increases efficiency but also opens new entry points for attackers. Compromised devices can halt production and expose sensitive intellectual property, resulting in costly downtime. Segment IoT networks, enforce device authentication, and update firmware regularly to maintain secure operations.
How can manufacturers build a strong cybersecurity strategy?
A robust cybersecurity strategy integrates prevention, detection, and recovery into a single program. Key practices include 24/7 monitoring, OT-specific response playbooks, and quarterly restore tests. Aligning controls with NIST 800-171 and CMMC strengthens compliance, shortens audits, and protects customer trust.
