Cyberattacks push manufacturers to boost AI defenses

Manufacturing remains the most targeted industry for cyberattacks.

Cyberattacks hit one in four manufacturers in 2024, costing millions in downtime and lost productivity. With ransomware incidents nearly doubling to 1,171 cases, experts say manufacturers must accelerate investment in AI-powered defense and zero-trust security to remain resilient.

“Manufacturers are prime targets for cyber attacks because they sit at the intersection of global supply chain, legacy OT systems, valuable IP data, and also the industry is ransom-based favorite,” said Ashish Gautam, Sr. Research Manager, TMT, Mordor Intelligence. He noted that “every hour of downtime with large manufacturers cost them in the range of a quarter to a million dollars,” making them high-value targets.

Outdated systems add to the risk. “More than half of the manufacturing firms still run outdated OS in the production environments,” Gautam said, adding that cybercriminals target proprietary designs and production processes to steal intellectual property.

Mark Nutt, Senior Vice President, International Sales at Cohesity, said vulnerabilities persist because “it’s an industry vertical that perhaps has been less regulated than others… there is a level of vulnerability here in manufacturing that I think we need to observe and be sensitive to.”

The push to the cloud brings both opportunities and risks. Gautam explained: “Cloud migration does increase security risk because it widens the attack surface, changes the threat model, and often outpaces the industry's ability to secure newer environments.” He warned that misconfigurations and reliance on cloud providers’ native security leave gaps, while “67% of manufacturing CISOs report a shortage of cloud security architects and development security operational professionals.”

Nutt agreed that cloud adoption requires careful management. “Transitioning to the cloud, cloud platform isn’t without risks. AI accelerates those risks, but you can also use it with the right partner… your speed to recover from [attacks] is going to be absolutely key,” he said.

AI is emerging as a powerful tool to bridge gaps in resilience. “AI based OT security platforms, when deployed, reduce the mean time to detect… by almost 60 to 70% in manufacturing deployments,” Gautam said. Nutt added that AI can track network anomalies and “identify when the last good copy was made… and speed your recovery” after an attack.

As Gautam concluded, AI enables manufacturers “to move from reactive defense to proactive and adaptive defense strategies,” making it an essential driver of cyber resilience.