Dragos observed 50 ransomware groups impacting industrial organizations in 2023 (up 28% in 2022) and 905 ransomware incidents impacting industrial organizations (a 49.5% increase). Manufacturing was impacted the most, in 71% of ransomware incidents. Trend Micro’s “What Decision-Makers Need to Know About Ransomware Risk” found 69% of ransomware attacks by the cybercriminal group Conti and 80% by the threat actor Lockbit impacted organizations with under 500 employees. 

Ransomware risk is high for small and medium manufacturing organizations. This impacts customers: multiple large manufacturers shut down plants when a critical supplier is hit with ransomware. After multiple small and medium suppliers informed Rockwell Automation they were impacted by ransomware and couldn’t deliver products for at least a month, Rockwell launched a new initiative. They assessed cybersecurity in their top 50 critical suppliers, finding small suppliers had little cybersecurity and medium suppliers had some in IT but not OT. They started a multi-year initiative to educate suppliers on cybersecurity and made cybersecurity contractually required. They are extending this initiative to OT cybersecurity using free resources from Dragos OT-CERT.

The result has been a dramatic improvement in Rockwell’s end to end supply-chain operations resiliency, customer protection, delivery times, company revenue and reputation. Significant improvement in cyber culture and awareness of the need to protect digital systems with proper security hygiene is a new standard for Rockwell suppliers and is now part of doing business with the company.