The company says that the three main motivations are ransomware, industrial espionage and data theft.
“What poses an even greater problem is that when these breaches are successful, yet go undetected, they allow hackers to establish footholds in organisations’ networks where they have free rein to wreak havoc over extended periods,” said Jon Heimerl, the manager of NTT Security’s threat intelligence communication team.
More than a third of manufacturers surveyed in NTT’s report “do not have an incident response plan in place”, Heimerl added.
The NTT Security report, for the second quarter of 2017, says that cyber attacks were up 24% globally for the three-month period. Two thirds of malware attacks were delivered by phishing emails, the report adds.
The report, based on events identified across the NTT Security global client base during the quarter, identifies trending threats and enables the company to implement IT security assessment and incident response tactics to stay ahead of hackers, and maintain the best protection for their clientele.
“Our global threat intelligence centres are constantly monitoring cyber activities on a global scale,” said Heimerl.
A third of all documented attacks targeted manufacturers and manufacturers appear in the top three targets in five of the six geographic regions globally, said NTT Security.
“This is very concerning, as manufacturers’ IT security liabilities often impacted not just the manufacturing organisations, but suppliers, as well as related industries and consumers,” said Heimerl.
