Keep the Lines Rolling: Protect Manufacturing with Zero Trust

A study from IBM reports that Manufacturing is the most attacked OT industry, accounting for 58% of all attacks. With over ten million manufacturing businesses worldwide and a manufacturing output of over sixteen trillion dollars in 2022, manufacturing is an attractive prize for hackers. With ransom amounts rising beyond $2M per incident, chief security officers for both Information and Operational Technology seek new options for protection from the widespread hacks that threaten production.

Some options, however, are better than others.

OPTION 1

A large manufacturing plant has implemented network segmentation to isolate its critical industrial control systems (ICS) from its IT network. However, the plant's ICS network has many undocumented connections between the SCADA and IT networks to enable remote access. If a hacker group gained access to the plant's IT network through phishing emails, those stolen login credentials put the plant's SCADA system in the crosshairs. The attackers could manipulate the system and cause disruptions to plant operations, or even demand a ransom to release control. 

Rather than face such a painful future outcome, the IT and the OT staff secure their networks using BlastShield to deliver Secure Remote Access with biometric multi-factor authentication. The OT assets are now cloaked and hidden from discovery, and all east/west movement is restricted by BlastShield’s micro-segmentation technology.

This plant dodged a bullet, but other plants are not so fortunate.

OPTION 2

A bustling manufacturing plant producing a high-value product grinds to a halt as all of its systems go offline. Cybercriminals have penetrated the facility's systems, shutting down the production line and demanding a ransom from the plant’s owners. Their existing firewall and VPN systems could prevent neither the theft of credentials nor shield the unpatched OT systems that left the plant vulnerable. 

They deploy BlastShield, and now their OT network is no longer at risk to credential theft or unauthorized lateral movement across the network. They did lose a great deal of time and a significant amount of money.

It was bad, but it could have been worse. 

OPTION 3

A highly profitable manufacturing plant produces cutting-edge electronic components and their network system allows internal remote desktop access to the server that manages the SCADA system. Unknown to everyone but one very secretive hacker group, this server has a zero-day vulnerability. This latent security flaw presents no apparent problem until one day when the administrator decides to allow RDP access from home.

The hacker group finds this new exposure through constant reconnaissance. A SCADA server on the Internet makes a juicy target. They act quickly to exploit their new discovery.  Altering robot control programs lead to faulty components and production delays, but that’s just for fun. Stealing proprietary data remains the hacker’s real goal as they make their way laterally across the IT network. For that matter, why not take a copy of the Human Resources database? Plenty of buyers for that information too.

The plant’s vendor announces the vulnerability and releases a patch, but the company's secrets are already splashed all over the headlines. It turns uglier still because they choose not to pay the ransom demand. 

As the OT administrators rebuild their entire system from the ground up, the new management requires better control. They identify BlastWave as the best solution. BlastWave secures their remote access with biometric MFA to the SCADA system, so the hackers can no longer penetrate the OT network. Network cloaking hides unpatched or even unknown vulnerabilities from being discovered. And microsegmentation prevents future exploitation of open east/west communications.

Don’t let this happen to you.

Take option number 1 and deploy BlastWave before it’s too late. 

BlastWave minimizes the cybersecurity risk for manufacturing OT networks and stymies the primary attack vectors used by AI-powered hackers: reconnaissance and phishing. BlastWave’s OT Zero Trust Protection solutions are designed to block hackers’ ability to cause downtime on critical manufacturing floors.