"Almost Half of Critical Manufacturing at Risk of Breach"

Security researchers at SecurityScorecards stated that critical manufacturing organizations must prioritize patching as high-severity vulnerabilities continue to increase within the sector.  The researchers found that nearly half (48%) of critical manufacturing organizations are vulnerable to a breach.  The researchers noted that 48% of the organizations analyzed received a rating of" C," "D," or "F" on SecurityScorecard's security ratings platform.  The researchers stated that organizations with an "A" security rating are 7.7 times less likely to sustain a breach than those with an "F" rating.   SecurityScorecard measurements show an increase of 38% year over year of high-severity vulnerabilities that remain unpatched.  The researchers stated that patching is an area critical manufacturing organizations should prioritize and make sure that they build repeatable capabilities to do asset classification, discover out of date versions, and then promptly fix them.  The researchers noted that, in 2022 alone, 76% of critical manufacturing organizations have high and medium-severity CVEs.  The researchers also found that the sector experienced an increase in malware infections from 2021 to 2022.  In 2022, 37% of critical manufacturing organizations had malware infections.  SecurityScorecard considers 10 factors when developing an organization's security rating.  Of those 10, the patching cadence "factor" for critical manufacturing experienced a significant drop from 2021 to 2022, moving from 88 (B) to 76 (C).

Infosecurity reports: "Almost Half of Critical Manufacturing at Risk of Breach"