What makes the manufacturing industry so vulnerable to cyberattacks?

The manufacturing industry has come to occupy the center of the cyber threat landscape, reflecting a clear change in the profile of the attackers' targets.

Driven by accelerated digitalization, integration between systems, and high dependence on operational continuity, industrial environments have become especially attractive and vulnerable.

The data reinforces this movement, because the sector concentrated about 27.7% of all global cyberattacks in 2025, consolidating itself as the main target.

This number shows that risk is no longer theoretical or punctual and has become part of the operational reality of industries, where any incident can generate immediate and significant impacts on production, revenue, and the entire supply chain.

Is manufacturing an exposed operation?

Unlike other sectors, where interruptions can be absorbed or circumvented, in the industry every minute of downtime represents a direct loss.

After all, production lines are highly synchronized, depend on multiple systems, and often work continuously. This creates an environment where the operation cannot simply be paused for security adjustments, updates, or investigations.

Which, in practice, keeps vulnerabilities active for longer than would be acceptable in other contexts. It is important to remember that when an incident happens, the impact goes far beyond the digital environment. 

This is because the stoppage of a production line immediately affects revenue, compromises delivery times and can generate cascading effects throughout the supply chain.

In this way, suppliers, distributors, and customers are impacted simultaneously, expanding the scope of the problem.

In more critical scenarios, the unavailability of systems can even interfere with operational safety, depending on the type of industry and the level of automation involved.

It is in this context that one of the biggest dilemmas in the sector arises, how to balance efficiency and safety without compromising the operation. After all, the pressure for productivity leads to prioritization of performance, availability, and scale.

At the same time, reinforcing safety requires changes that can impact processes, routines, and even the speed of production.

The result is an environment where decisions are constantly strained between keeping the operation flowing and reducing risks, making the industry an even more attractive target for attacks that exploit exactly this limitation.

What are the main vectors and vulnerabilities of the manufacturing industry?

The main reason for the increase in vulnerability in the industry lies in the convergence between IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology) environments. This integration, essential for efficiency and visibility gains, also expands the attack surface.

This is because industrial systems that were previously isolated are now connected to corporate networks and, in many cases, to the internet without having been designed to deal with modern threats.

Added to this is the low security maturity in OT environments, where practices such as continuous monitoring, vulnerability management, and access control are still limited or non-existent.

Another critical factor is the dependence on legacy systems and the structural limitations of the operation itself.

Many industries still use old technologies, which do not receive security updates or do not support modern protection mechanisms.

However, replacing or updating these systems is not simple, because as we said, any change may require the interruption of production, which generates resistance and constant postponements.

At the same time, the supply chain further amplifies the risk. The presence of multiple vendors, partners, and service providers creates multiple indirect entry points, making the environment more distributed and difficult to control.

Finally, the human factor is consolidated as one of the vectors most exploited by attackers. Techniques such as phishing, social engineering, and credential misuse continue to be highly effective.

Especially when we talk about environments where the focus is on operation and not on safety, which is the case of manufacturing industries.

After all, employees with access to critical systems do not always have the necessary context to identify threats or understand the impact of their actions on cyber risk.

This creates a scenario where small, day-to-day decisions such as clicking a link or reusing a password can open doors to large-scale incidents.

What needs to change in the manufacturing industry's security strategy?

Faced with a scenario where the industry has become one of the main targets of cyberattacks, it is evident that traditional approaches are no longer enough to deal with the complexity and speed of today's threats.

Security needs to stop being an isolated layer, focused only on technology, and start acting in an integrated way with the operation.

More than preventing attacks, the goal becomes to reduce exposure, increase resilience and ensure operational continuity. Here's how you can do this.

From technological protection to operation protection

For a long time, cybersecurity was treated as an exclusive responsibility of the IT area, with a focus on tools, infrastructure, and access control.

However, this model no longer responds to the reality of the industry, where the impact of an incident goes far beyond the systems and directly affects production.

Thus, protecting technology alone is not enough when the risk is distributed across processes, people, and operational routines.

It is necessary to evolve to an approach where safety is integrated into the operation, being considered in day-to-day decisions and not just in technical projects.

This means aligning safety with business objectives, ensuring that protective measures are not seen as barriers, but as an essential part of keeping production active, safe, and sustainable.

Visibility and continuous monitoring

Many organizations invest in tools, but still operate with little clarity about unsafe behavior, threat exposure, and points of vulnerability. Without this understanding, decision-making is based more on assumptions than data.

That is why continuous monitoring is so important, it allows you to change this scenario, bringing a more accurate view of what happens in practice.

By monitoring behaviors, identifying risk patterns, and understanding how users interact with critical systems, the company is able to act in a more targeted way, prioritizing efforts where the risk is greatest and increasing the effectiveness of strategies.

Behavior-oriented awareness

Traditional awareness programs, based on one-off campaigns and generic content, have limited impact on real behavior change.

In practice, employees continue to be exposed to threats because they cannot connect the content learned with the situations they face on a daily basis. This reduces engagement and, consequently, the effectiveness of initiatives.

A behavior-oriented approach, on the other hand, changes this scenario by focusing on context and recurrence.

Thus, instead of isolated actions, awareness becomes continuous, based on real situations and adapted to the risk profile of each public. Increasing the relevance of communication, strengthening decision-making, and reducing human error.

PhishX's Role in Reducing Risks for Manufacturing Industries

PhishX's role in reducing risk in the industry is directly linked to the ability to make visible what, in most organizations, is still invisible, human behavior.

Instead of treating security only from a technological perspective, the approach is based on the identification of real risks in the employees' routine, considering how they interact with systems, information, and possible threats.

Based on practical simulations and continuous data collection, the company transforms subjective perceptions into concrete evidence, allowing decisions to be made based on real exposure indicators, and not on assumptions.

In addition, the performance is based on targeted and continuous communication, adapted to the context and risk level of each audience within the organization.

This increases engagement and makes awareness more effective, as it connects the content to the operational reality of each employee.

As a result, safety is no longer an abstract concept and becomes part of the day-to-day operation, practically reducing the probability of incidents.

By integrating behavior, data, and strategy, PhishX contributes to a more mature approach, where protection is aligned with business continuity and industry reality. Want to know how? Contact our experts and learn more.

The manufacturing industry is an easy target for cyberattacks.