With these words, a Cadbury’s factory in Tasmania was forced to close for three days in June 2017 when parent Mondelez International’s entire global IT network was knocked out by the Petya ransomware attack. With 500 employees and 50,000 tonnes of chocolate produced a year, the impact was significant – and not just on Aussie chocolate lovers.
To date, Cadbury’s is one of the unlucky few manufacturers in Australia to have been hit so hard by a cyberattack. But our data suggests it may just be the tip of the iceberg. Counter-intuitively, manufacturing has proven to be one of the sectors most vulnerable to cyber risk. The reasons why suggest there’s much more pain to come.
A shifting risk landscape
As one of the world’s largest commercial property insurers, this is just one of several worrying cyber-risk trends we’ve observed. Australian manufacturers, and businesses in general, should be paying closer attention.
The rise of indiscriminate attacks, like last year’s WannaCry and NotPetya, is one of the reasons why manufacturers are among the most impacted by cyber threats in recent years, according to our loss data. Due to the global interconnectedness of business…
