Kaspersky report: Cyberattacks cost manufacturers over $1 million per incident

A joint report by Kaspersky and VDC Strategy titled ‘Cyber Resilience, Built for Manufacturing’ reveals that approximately 60% of manufacturers estimate a single cyber incident could result in losses exceeding $1 million. The report notes that the average operational downtime following a cyberattack is 15.3 hours.

Major financial losses often stem from production halts, delivery delays, and subsequent penalties rather than forensic costs alone. As manufacturing shifts toward cyber-physical systems (CPS) through digital transformation, cyber risks are evolving from purely digital issues into direct business risks that impact production stability, quality, and operational continuity.

While only 9% of manufacturers currently consider themselves fully digitized, 60% expect to achieve full digitalization within the next two years. Key drivers for this transition include increasing production efficiency (24%), reducing operational costs (15%), and creating new strategic opportunities (14%).

Challenges remain regarding the integration of security policies. Currently, 59% of surveyed companies have IT departments managing security policies, but these often fail to reflect actual shop-floor conditions. Other significant challenges include managing multiple security tools (44%) and operational technology (OT) patch management (38%).