Eight in 10 UK Manufacturers Hit by Cyber Incident in a Year

Eight in 10 UK manufacturers were hit by a cyber incident in the past year, with 78% of businesses suffering a serious incident, according to ESET. The security vendor polled 500 senior decision-makers responsible for IT, OT, operations, risk or security in UK manufacturing organisations to understand the threat landscape.

Almost all (95%) respondents said an attack had a direct impact on their business, and 53% reported financial loss, with supply chain disruption (44%) and missed commitments (39%) also common; 77% of those experiencing a shutdown endured 1–7 days of downtime, while 56% faced 1–3 days of outages.

A fifth said they have limited or no visibility into cyber risk that could affect production, and AI-enabled attacks were cited by 46% as a threat to production, ahead of phishing (42%), ransomware (40%) and unauthorised system access (38%). The IBM X-Force study noted manufacturing accounted for 28% of incidents last year, underscoring the sector’s continued targeting, a trend reinforced by references to JLR as a high-profile example, according to the article.