Why Downtime is the Biggest Cyber Risk Facing Manufacturers

For small and medium manufacturers, downtime is the top cyber risk because every lost hour impacts cash flow, on-time, in-full delivery, and customer trust. Most incidents are not headline breaches; they are small failures that stop barcode scanners, operator screens, production scheduling, or shipping labels. 

The total cost often exceeds any ransom and now affects insurance premiums, supplier audits, and customer awards. Older, unsupported machines and software increase the risk that a single issue could stop an entire line. The solution is practical and well-suited for smaller teams: identify your critical equipment and applications; require multi-factor sign-in for remote and privileged access; separate office networks from plant networks; use strong endpoint protection; and demonstrate your ability to restore quickly through timed recovery drills. Begin with your three most revenue-critical systems and establish clear recovery targets. 

In this blog, we shift from the “why” to the “how.” You will learn an easy way to estimate the actual cost of lost hours, identify a few dependencies that commonly stall a line, and select an initial set of fixes to enable quick recovery without significant expense. We outline roles for operations, finance, and IT, the metrics that track progress, and a brief checklist you can use in one planning meeting to reduce the impact of the next disruption. 

Downtime is a business risk, not an IT ticket

On a plant floor, every minute links upstream raw materials to downstream delivery windows. When systems stall, such as MES, PLC data gateways, label printers, scanners, or when the ERP machines are idle, WIP builds up, and premium freight or weekend labor begins to cut into margins. Even without ransom demands, the opportunity cost of lost throughput far exceeds most one-time incident costs. Treat downtime the way finance treats cash flow: as measurable, forecastable, and protected. 

The real threat: cascading micro-failures 

Most incidents aren’t major breaches; they start as minor faults that cascade through production.
Here are common causes that turn a small glitch into hours of lost output. 

• A missing patch leads to a scanner driver crash, stopping operations and causing production to starve by midday. 

• A DNS setting error disrupts software license checks, the operator screen loads, but the quality team cannot release batches. 

• Backup jobs are successful but restores aren’t tested. One corrupted database turns a 30-minute fix into a 30-hour rebuild. 

The expanding blast radius: insurers, vendors, customers 

Cyber incidents now influence whether companies will insure you, supply you, or buy from you. Many partners treat security controls as entry requirements, not extras. They look for proof that you can prevent attacks and recover quickly. The points below show how insurers, suppliers, and customers evaluate readiness and how one outage can affect those decisions. 

• Insurance: Carriers require MFA, EDR, logging, and tested recovery. Gaps can increase premiums, result in exclusions, or lead to denials. 

• Vendors: Critical suppliers require security questionnaires and right-to-audit; an outage at your plant can ripple into their sales and operations planning by disrupting forecasts, schedules, and deliveries 

• Customers: Key accounts are increasingly demanding evidence of controls (access, backup, incident response) before rewarding POs.

A single downtime event can trigger contract penalties, expedite fees, and renewal scrutiny long after systems are restored. 

Why legacy systems magnify risk 

Manufacturers often depend on a mix of modern cloud tools and outdated on-site systems. This combination can conceal vulnerabilities that surface at the worst moments, such as during a rush order. Common problem areas include devices that can’t be updated, unsecured networks, and programs that rely on a single setup or person. The bullet points below highlight where these risks typically emerge. 

• Unpatchableassets exposed to modern threats.
• Flat networks where one compromised workstation can access critical controllers or shared files.
• Single-path applications with one server, one database, and only one person who knows the restart steps. 

Modernization doesn’t mean full replacement. It involves isolating risk, implementing protective controls for older systems, and establishing repeatable recovery procedures. 

Proactive controls that protect throughput, not just data 

Start here to protect production, control risk, and prove you can recover quickly. 

• Asset and software inventory
  Know every server, workstation, controller gateway, and critical application version. You cannot update, isolate, or restore what you do not know exists. 

• Vulnerability and patch discipline
  Set regular update schedules for servers, workstations, and computers near production equipment, with each scheduled to have a maintenance window and a tested rollback plan. 

• Identity hardening
  Require multi-factor sign-in for remote access, and for powerful accounts, grant each role only the access it needs; revoke access the same day someone changes roles or leaves. These steps close common entry points and slow the spread of an incident. 

• Network segmentation
  Separate office systems from plant systems and create smaller groups for higher-risk users. Use an approved list of allowed internet destinations and block domain name lookups to prevent a single bad click from causing a full day of disruption. 

• Backup you can prove
  Follow a defined approach with frequent application-aware backups, immutable copies, and documented, timed restores for the enterprise resource planning system, key file sets, and critical virtual machines. Practice restores, so recovery time is known and reliable. 

• Monitoring and runbooks
  Set alerts for device health, backup status, and update success to identify issues before the first shift. Pair alerts with clear, step-by-step guides that specify whom to contact, what to stop or start, where the last verified clean data is stored, and the exact recovery sequence. 

Measure what operations care about 

Use the steps below to link security efforts to plant performance. Monitor them monthly to demonstrate faster detection, quicker recovery, and more consistent production. 

• Time to detect a problem and time to recover for your most critical production applications. 

• How up-to-date are the patches and backups for each work area or line. 

• Log of users and high-access accounts using multi-factor sign-in. 

• How often you practice recovery drills, along with the date and duration of the last successful timed restore. 

Bottom line 

Ransomware is a concern, but lost production is what erodes margins. Treat downtime as a board-level risk. With discipline, proactive controls, and practiced recovery, manufacturers can turn cyber incidents from plant-wide shutdowns into manageable disruptions. If you want help turning these controls into fewer missed ship dates and a faster, proven recovery plan, Secure Strategic Technology can partner with your operations, finance, and information technology teams to make it happen without slowing the line.