NTT DATA
TECH & AI
E very October, Cyber Awareness Month comes with the same reminders: patch your systems, train your people, watch for phishing. For manufacturers, that advice is important but misses a lot of the biggest risks. The factory floor is not the only way attackers can get in. Suppliers are now posing a risk too.
Sheetal Mehta, Executive Managing Director and Global Head of Cybersecurity at NTT DATA, has watched vulnerabilities open up across teams support.“ Manufacturers run on long, multi-tier supplier networks and third-party involvement now figures in a majority of manufacturing breaches, with such incidents increasing sharply every year,” he says.
According to the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report, third-party involvement in breaches doubled from 15 % to 30 % in just one year. When downtime can cost millions, a compromised vendor is now everybody’ s problem.
NTT DATA
HEADQUARTERS: TOKYO, JAPAN
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: ~ 200,000
YEAR FOUNDED: 1988
Cyberattacks through suppliers“ Every single vendor breach has a cascading effect on downstream companies that are compromised – the modern supply chain breaks at its most connected node, not its weakest one,” Sheetal explains.
Much of this vulnerability arrives in the factory already installed on machines.“ Industrial equipment itself arrives with vendor-installed software,
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