Building a Culture of Cyber Resilience in Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector is currently the most targeted industry for cyberattacks, with ransomware accounting for 71% of these incidents. The document identifies five key challenges to cyber resilience: organizational culture gaps, legacy system vulnerabilities, operational downtime sensitivity, strategic misalignment with business priorities, and a complex global regulatory landscape. To address these, the World Economic Forum proposes three guiding principles: making cyber resilience a business imperative, driving resilience by design, and managing the broader ecosystem. The report includes case studies from companies like Unilever, Volkswagen, and Schneider Electric to illustrate the implementation of these strategies.

• Manufacturing has been the most targeted sector by cyberattacks for three consecutive years, representing 25.7% of all cyber incidents, with ransomware making up 71% of those attacks.
• Cyberattacks on operational technology (OT) can have severe physical consequences; nearly 57% of such attacks in 2022 resulted in real-world impacts like equipment fires, production disruptions, and risks to shop-floor workers.
• The global cost of cybercrime is increasing by an average of 125% per year, with the average cost of a data breach in industrial settings reaching $4.73 million, potentially totaling $10.5 trillion globally by 2025.
• Organizational challenges are the primary inhibitor to a cyber-resilient culture, specifically the divergent priorities and cultures between IT and OT teams and a global cybersecurity talent shortage that exceeds 67% in the manufacturing sector.
• Technical vulnerabilities are driven by the use of legacy OT systems that cannot adapt to modern security standards, with nearly 71% of these systems lacking proper support and robust access management.
• The document proposes three guiding principles for cyber resilience: making it a business imperative (embedding it in organizational DNA), driving resilience by design (integrating security into processes and assets), and engaging the ecosystem (managing third-party risks and partnerships).
• Supply chain vulnerabilities are a critical systemic risk, as 41% of organizations that suffered a material impact from a cyberattack reported the breach originated from a third party, and 54% lack adequate visibility into supply chain vulnerabilities.
• The regulatory landscape for manufacturing is fragmented and complex, featuring mandatory requirements like the EU's Cyber Resilience Act and NIS 2, and voluntary frameworks such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 and ISA/IEC 62443.

APA

World Economic Forum (2024). Building a Culture of Cyber Resilience in Manufacturing. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Building_a_Culture_of_Cyber_Resilience_in_Manufacturing_2024.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Building a Culture of Cyber Resilience in Manufacturing. 2024. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Building_a_Culture_of_Cyber_Resilience_in_Manufacturing_2024.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Building a Culture of Cyber Resilience in Manufacturing |date=May 2024 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Building_a_Culture_of_Cyber_Resilience_in_Manufacturing_2024.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2024building, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Building a Culture of Cyber Resilience in Manufacturing}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2024}, month = may, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Building_a_Culture_of_Cyber_Resilience_in_Manufacturing_2024.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }