Ransomware attacks have become a major problem for the manufacturing industry as cyber criminals are highly interested in targeting the industrial control systems (ICS) that manage various operations. On analysing the records researchers have discovered that the number of publicly recorded ransomware attacks against the manufacturing industry has tripled in the last year.
As the Industrial control system (ICS) encompasses several types of control systems and associated instrumentation used for industrial process control, it has become an area that several hacking groups are actively looking to target. Due to the interconnected nature of the manufacturing industry, if any one factory faces cyber-attack there arise wide-ranging consequences.
Cyber researchers believe ransomware attack is the “biggest threat” to the manufacturing industry as it can disrupt the entire industrial process.
For cyber criminals, manufacturing makes a highly strategic target because in many cases these are operations that can’t afford to be out of action for a long period of time, so they could be more likely to give in to the demands of the attackers and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoin as ransom in exchange for getting the network back.
