46% of Manufacturers Report Cyber Incidents Despite High Confidence

Nearly half of industrial organizations experienced a cyber incident during the past year, yet nine in ten remain confident they can prevent, contain or recover from one, according to new research from Rockwell Automation.

The company's Operational Resilience in the Age of Connectivity report surveyed 1,560 manufacturing and industrial decision-makers across 17 countries. The findings expose a gap between security confidence and real-world incident exposure as factories connect information technology with operational technology.

Rockwell found that 46 percent of respondents reported a cyber incident in the previous 12 months, while 90 percent expressed confidence in their ability to prevent, contain or recover from an attack. More than one-third also identified cybersecurity risk as a significant external barrier to business growth.

The survey suggests companies recognize security as an investment, not simply a cost center. Sixty-two percent said they had invested in cybersecurity platforms, and respondents ranked cybersecurity as the second-highest technology investment for perceived return on investment.

Still, spending alone does not demonstrate resilience. IT and OT integration points were ranked as the second-most vulnerable area for cyber incidents. These connections can allow an intrusion that begins in conventional enterprise systems to affect production, safety, quality and business continuity.

Forty-five percent of respondents plan to apply AI or machine learning to cybersecurity initiatives over the next year. That may improve monitoring and detection, but industrial environments require careful testing because automated decisions can affect physical processes and long-lived equipment.

“Industrial organizations understand that cybersecurity directly affects uptime, continuity, productivity and growth, but technology investments alone do not create operational resilience or confidence in an organization's security posture,” said Rick Kaun, global director of cybersecurity services at Rockwell Automation.

For security leaders, the confidence gap is a reason to validate assumptions with recovery exercises, segmented architectures and tested incident playbooks. In industrial security, resilience is measured by whether operations can continue safely when controls fail.