Why Ransomware, Credential Theft and Phishing Schemes Persist

One of the great things about covering industrial cybersecurity is the number of reports, studies and white papers being produced right now to help provide intelligence on threats, research on new tools, and data on leading trends.

The tough part is sorting through all this data and, at some point, prioritizing it in order to get the most and best information.

One source that I look forward to each year is IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index. It’s full of all that stuff I just mentioned, but will special attention paid to the industrial sector. 

Unfortunately, some of that attention results from manufacturing being the most highly attacked industry for the fourth consecutive year. Also, according to the Index, it had the most ransomware incidents in 2024.

But, as Chris Caridi, a Cyber Threat Analyst for the X-Force and our guest for today’s episode shared with me, the news is not all bad. Watch/listen as we discuss:

• The rise in infostealer malware, credential harvesting and phishing attacks.
• The importance of understanding how to secure new technology before investing and implementing it.
• Why most cybersecurity issues are a human problem, not a technical problem.
• Why multi-factor authentication is now a must for OT connections.
• The misconfiguration errors that continue to plague manufacturing, and how they create a series of other cybersecurity problems.
• How manufacturing's cybersecurity journey is similar to the financial sector 10 years ago, and why this should be source of optimism.

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To catch up on past episodes, you can go to Manufacturing.net, IEN.com or MBTmag.com. You can also check Security Breach out wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple, Amazon and Overcast.

If you have a cybersecurity story or topic that you’d like to have us explore on Security Breach, you can reach me at [e-mail].