The manufacturing sector is one of the largest and most diverse global industries. It’s part of vastly evolving and increasingly critical segments including aerospace, optics, computer and robotics, chemicals, automotive, electronics, transportation, pharmaceuticals and more.
A data breach as a result of a cyberattack can have devastating results for any manufacturing company.
The company will not only see hours of downtime, resulting in lost revenue, but also lose consumer trust. Additionally, the company’s confidential proprietary information runs the threat of exposure to competitors.
[Related: NY SHIELD Act: What It Is and How to Make Sure Your Business Complies]
In contrast to many other industries, a manufacturer’s confidential data isn’t typically the personal identifiable information (PII) that concern financial, health care and retail industries.
Manufacturing companies are more at risk for data breaches compromising their intellectual property and trade secrets. These include patents, designs and formulas — in other words, the information that makes a manufacturer successful. They also can be vulnerable to system shutdowns or service disruptions.
That’s why having a strong cybersecurity initiative for your company means more than just checking boxes for the sake of compliance. It’s crucial to reducing critical risks. In fact, IBM’s 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report shows that data breaches can cost affected businesses $4.1 million on average globally.
Here are several ways to implement strong cybersecurity steps and best practices for your manufacturing company.
[Related: Extend Cybersecurity to Apps Like Microsoft Teams]
Perform a Risk Assessment
To fully grasp what’s at stake and how to prepare, your manufacturing company should conduct an IT risk assessment.
Overall, an IT risk assessment can identify potential threats, vulnerabilities and how likely your company is to fall prey to an attack. Additionally, it can cover what an attack’s impact could be and what it would cost the company to bounce back.
Reviewing a risk assessment will help higher management make the best decisions possible when it comes to multiple security areas, including these:
- IT defense through employee training
- Security measures
- Access levels to intellectual property
- Company storage of intellectual property
Train Your Employees
Most cyberattacks aren’t due to hyper-genius plans or mastermind criminals — they’re often simply the result of an employee’s misunderstanding or oversight.
This is why regular employee training is critical as your first line of defense. Make sure all of your employees, especially those who work with sensitive data and intellectual property, are aware of cybersecurity best practices and how important they are.
Include those best practices in new-hire welcome packages, and enforce regular, mandatory training programs that review and remind employees of your cybersecurity rules and regulations.
Manage Authorized Users
Different departments and users need to have access to different types of data. It’s critical to define who should have access to what data in order to minimize risk. Then, build a plan that protects the data while providing the access needed for employees to do their jobs.
Allow only authorized users to access confidential information, such as payroll data, patents and other private designs and formulas that your manufacturing company might have. Selectively restricting access to these types of data can help secure them from cyberattacks.
Categorize Your Information
Because manufacturers store a wide range of information, it’s important to categorize company data to keep track of how you secure that information. Place data into a ranked hierarchy:
- Confidential
- Sensitive
- Internal
Confidential
Confidential information includes the PII of customers, clients and employees. For example, billing information, phone numbers and addresses are all confidential information.
Sensitive
Next, sensitive information includes tax records, audit records and other information that only select personnel within your manufacturing company should be able to access.
Internal
Finally, internal information is for insider use only. It can include patents, ideas, formulas and other proprietary company information.
[Related: Stay Safe as Tax Season Approaches]
Implement Multi-Layered Security
Adopting a multilayered security approach that uses a mix of common security practices can help protect your manufacturing company’s data. Multi-layered security combines several components (such as monitoring, networking, device and patch management) to mitigate threats and bridge any security gaps.
Back Up Your Data
Backing up your data helps prevent the loss or downtime due to incidents such as hard drive failures, malware attacks or compromised (hacked) systems.
Be sure to build a plan and understand how your data is backed up – it should be backed up both locally and in the cloud. And, it is critical to understand the expected downtime should you need to recover from a backup. There are many options available – be sure you understand what data is backed up, how often and how to recover.
Train Your Staff
Invest in security training for you and your staff. Knowing how to identify suspicious activity and what to do in case of a security threat or data breach can empower your employees and create a strong first defense. This training can also include best security practices to proactively keep your business’ data protected.
Consider NY SHIELD Act Compliance
If you do business in New York or run your business out of New York, you need to ensure that your company is compliant with the NY SHIELD Act. Building an IT infrastructure that supports compliance to the NY SHIELD Act is crucial to operating in and with New York residents. CMIT Solutions can assist your business with the requirements needed and a plan to fill any gaps in your compliance. Learn more about the act here.
Update Your Antivirus Software Regularly
Have your IT department or IT partner manage your IT security, including computers’ antivirus and anti-malware software. Management of these systems can ease frustrations and assure better security. If you don’t have a team actively managing these systems, then set up systems to automatically update. Hackers’ methods of manipulation are evolving constantly, which means your software needs to be running the latest updates 24/7.
Do manage these updates across the entire network — not just on one or two of the “main” computers. Hackers are looking for the weakest link – any system connected to your network is an avenue for destructive access.
Fulfill CMMC Certification
If you work with a government organization, you may need to ensure your business is CMMC-certified. The CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) identifies a government organization’s current cybersecurity initiatives and sees where improvement is needed. The CMMC grades how efficient and how proactive or reactive an organization is in managing its security and how involved certain IT security measures are.
Your company is required to gain CMMC certification if you operate with information from the Department of Defense. For more information on CMMC certification, check out the U.S. Department of Defense’s website.
[Related: Don’t Ignore Software Updates and Security Patches]
Implement the Strongest Cybersecurity Strategy With CMIT Solutions in Rochester
In the manufacturing industry, “taking it easy” isn’t an option when it comes to cybersecurity. But don’t worry — CMIT Solutions’ managed IT services can help.
We have extensive experience dealing with complex networks and control systems in a manufacturing environment. Plus, we know the importance of keeping your information safe, and we understand just how critical uptime and reliability are for your industry.
Let’s get started. Learn more about our managed IT services, or contact us today for a consultation.
Featured image via Unsplash
