Cybersecurity Challenges Demand Cooperation Between IT and OT - Food Engineering Magazine
Nearly half of manufacturers experienced a cyber incident in 2025, with ransomware groups targeting industrial control systems, and experts warn that AI is making attacks easier and more frequent.
Automation companies and network specialists did not envision today’s cybersecurity challenges. In 2025, nearly half of manufacturers experienced at least one cyber incident.
The number of connected devices in operations technology (OT) environments has exploded, rising from 8.8 billion in 2010 to approximately 41.2 billion in 2025.
In 2010, manufacturing had about 8.8 billion connected devices and, in 2025, there are approximately 41.2 billion.
Ransomware groups target industrial control systems
Hackers are increasingly targeting industrial control systems, with food and beverage manufacturing ranking No. 3 in ransomware impact.
Dragos tracked 119 ransomware groups targeting industrial organizations in 2025, up from 80 the year before, and experts do not expect this curve to flatten in 2027.
Ransomware now confirms that number as reality.
AI lowers the barrier to cyberattacks
The S7 communication security vulnerability has been known, but it can be exploited even more easily through AI.
A Python-based tool forces Siemens S7-300/S7-400 PLCs into STOP mode via the Snap7 communications protocol, and a large language model can locate S7 controllers without writing a single line of code.
You can create software using a large language model that can locate S7 controllers without writing a single line of code, stop an S7-300 and manipulate values in a data block.
Cybersecurity investments framed as reliability
The pitch for operational technology (OT) security now sounds like a reliability project, and chief financial officers already know how to fund those.
Siemens' 2024 True Cost of Downtime report puts unplanned downtime for a typical fast-moving consumer goods plant at about $36,000 an hour.
A 12-hour outage approaches half a million dollars before spoiled product is counted, and companies are building more security spending into modernization and new-line capex from day one.
Every CFO understands what a 12-hour stoppage on a packaging line costs.
IT and OT must collaborate to secure assets
Successful mitigation depends on IT leaders, plant managers and engineers working together to leverage plant-floor equipment expertise.
IT tends to own the security budget and staff, and it has a fair claim to the lead: roughly 70% of OT incidents originate in IT, according to Dragos’s annual OT Cybersecurity Report.
The security programs that hold up are the ones where operations get an equal vote, and companies are naming an operations lead on the security program.
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