The price of vulnerability: Why process industries can't afford to run the risk of weak cyber security
11/12/2025 ABB Process Automation
Delaying cyber investment seems like a wise way to control costs for process industries. That is until a breach leaves your business offline for weeks, has customers defect to competitors, and regulators start asking uncomfortable questions about what you knew and when.
"Can we really justify the expense?" When it comes to cyber security investments, this is a question that process industry senior leaders must consider, whether it is a pulp and paper mill, metals plant or mining operator. But the true question is whether you can live without strong cyber defenses, not whether you can afford them.
In recent years, manufacturing and critical infrastructure are the industries most commonly targeted by threat actors worldwide, overtaking financial services and healthcare. The danger scenario is especially harsh for process industries. Because these processes run continuously, a cyber incident can jeopardize product quality, raise safety risks and cause cascading supply chain disruptions. It has become a case of if, not when, an attack will come, and whether the organization in question will still be standing afterward.
The Price of Exposure
What happens when a mid-sized paper mill goes offline for a week due to a ransomware attack? Recent ABB research shows that unplanned downtime costs process industries a minimum of $10,000 per hour, with 76 percent of decision-makers estimating an hourly cost of up to $500,000. The immediate cost in lost production revenue is obvious and painful, but there is also a ripple effect that spreads through the supply chain like wildfire.
Upstream suppliers suddenly have nowhere to send raw materials. Feedstock piles up in yards with no processing capacity. Downstream manufacturers who depend on that mill's output for packaging materials or tissue products scramble for alternatives. Store shelves start showing gaps. Retail deliveries slow. Prices tick upward. What looked like an isolated incident at "a small paper mill in the middle of the country" now affects customers thousands of miles away.
Process industries sit within complex supply chains where a single compromised link creates pressure on every other participant. If you're a tier-one supplier with major customers watching your every move, a cyber breach can destroy brand equity and trusted relationships you've spent decades building.
The financial calculation shifts dramatically when accounting for these externalities. One hour of downtime might cost X dollars in lost production. But a week-long outage? That calculation must include the cost of emergency raw material disposal, penalty clauses with downstream customers, premium pricing for expedited recovery services, potential litigation from affected supply chain partners, and the near-impossible-to-quantify erosion of customer confidence.
So, what are the outdated misconceptions and perceptions holding back progress? And what is the path forward for process industries today?
Reframing Cyber Security Investment
Many organizations still treat cyber security as they would any other insurance premium, like a grudging payment made to cover unlikely scenarios. They see a $500,000 security infrastructure investment and think about all the other pressing needs that money could address: equipment upgrades, workforce retention programs, efficiency improvements. This framing is backwards. Cyber security should be recognized as essential to safeguarding process control systems or safety equipment.
The insurance analogy breaks down immediately when you examine recovery realities. Traditional insurance transfers financial risk, whereas cyber security investments prevent the incident entirely. Once a major breach occurs, no insurance payout will compensate for weeks of production losses, permanent customer defections to competitors, or the years-long shadow cast over the organization's reputation.
Insurance companies now evaluate OT security posture with extraordinary scrutiny, examining network segmentation, backup protocols, multi-factor authentication on remote access and organizational ownership of cyber risks, precisely because they've seen how devastatingly inadequate defenses prove to be in practice.
Moreover, financial decision-makers must consider the true cost-benefit equation. A robust security architecture prevents dozens of potential breaches over its operational lifetime while enabling the safe data connectivity that modern operations increasingly require. Even more so with many organizations pursuing digital transformation to remain competitive. Rushing toward these "shiny new toys" without first securing foundational systems is like building a skyscraper on sand.
Connectivity Catch-22
Labor shortages, aging workforces and the complexity of modern operations demand greater automation and AI-enabled decision support. However, the same connectivity that enables predictive maintenance, real-time optimization and autonomous operations also creates potential attack vectors. You can't hand over the keys to autonomous systems without a robust security foundation beneath them.
The convergence of IT and OT expands the potential pathways into previously isolated systems. Legacy control systems – some designed decades ago when physical isolation provided adequate protection – now require integration with enterprise IT systems to deliver the data insights that autonomous operations demand. Each integration point represents a potential vulnerability.
Black-box systems that once operated in isolation must now be opened, with control surfaces more accessible to legitimate users but also threat actors. The challenge isn't whether to pursue this convergence (competitive pressure makes it inevitable) but whether organizations will secure these integrations properly or treat security as an afterthought to be retrofitted expensively later.
When security architecture is embedded from the start, with proper network segmentation, validated patching protocols, explainable AI frameworks and granular access controls, organizations can pursue digital transformation confidently. When security is bolted on afterward, every new capability requires expensive workarounds, creates operational friction and still leaves gaps that skilled attackers can exploit.
When Cyber Threats Become Safety Risks
Cyber threats in process industries pose more risks than simply data breaches or financial losses, there is a threat to human safety. When an attacker gains access to operational technology controlling high-temperature processes, heavy machinery or chemical systems, the potential for catastrophic incidents becomes very real.
Regulations governing critical infrastructure like oil and gas already mandate stringent cyber controls, precisely because these risks translate directly into potential harm to workers and communities. Not all process industries have yet faced equally rigid regulatory requirements, but this gap is closing. Organizations waiting for regulators to force their hand will find themselves scrambling to meet standards under time pressure rather than implementing thoughtfully designed defenses on their own terms.
Organizations should start to benchmark awareness levels, particularly when it comes to incident reporting protocols, across different employee groups. Today, the most common entry points for breaches remain seemingly innocuous actions: clicking a phishing link, using weak authentication on remote access or improperly handling portable devices like USB drives and maintenance laptops.
While every employee represents a potential vulnerability, they also have the potential to be a critical defense asset. Process industry employees need real-world cyber-drill training, with OT-specific scenarios that reflect their actual work environment as well as the role-specific threats they're likely to encounter. When awareness training feels relevant and personalized, retention and vigilance improve dramatically.
Yesterday’s Defenses vs Tomorrow’s Threats
Perhaps the most insidious cost of under-investing in cyber security is the complacency that builds when organizations remain unscathed thus far. Many facilities implemented basic security measures a decade ago and haven't substantially updated those defenses since. The logic is superficially appealing: "We haven't been attacked yet, so why spend more?" This is equivalent to your smoke detectors not going off in ten years and concluding that you can safely disconnect them.
The threat landscape evolves constantly. Attack techniques that didn't exist five years ago are now commodity tools available to relatively unsophisticated actors. Vulnerabilities discovered in industrial control systems and OT-specific protocols create new attack surfaces. An organization's static defenses from 2015 will be ill-equipped to face 2025 threats.
Responsibility falls ambiguously between IT departments focused on enterprise systems and operations teams managing production equipment. Without dedicated roles, nobody has the mandate or authority to drive consistent improvements. This diffusion of accountability means security concerns compete poorly for attention and resources against more immediate operational pressures.
From Reactive to Proactive
The economic pressures facing process industries are real. Steel mills face challenging markets. Paper production confronts secular headwinds. Mining operations manage volatile commodity prices. In this environment, every capital investment will continue to face intense scrutiny.
But framing cyber security as discretionary spending rather than foundational infrastructure represents a category error with potentially fatal consequences. The "trim the fat" instinct that might reasonably target certain overhead costs becomes dangerous when applied to defenses protecting continuous operations, worker safety and supply chain integrity.
Organizations waiting for perfect economic conditions to invest in security are making the same mistake as those who defer maintenance of critical equipment until breakdown forces emergency repairs. The question isn't whether cyber threats will materialize but whether you'll address known vulnerabilities proactively or reactively, and reactive always costs more.
The most successful approach starts with honest assessment. What assets do you actually have? What's their current security posture? Which systems are truly critical to operations? Where do gaps exist between your risk exposure and your defensive capabilities? These questions can't be answered without visibility, which requires investment in the monitoring and assessment tools.
From there, a risk-based approach allows prioritization. Not every system requires state-of-the-art defenses simultaneously. But every organization needs clarity about which systems are end-of-life (where compensatory monitoring provides the best available protection), which can be secured through network segmentation and updated protocols, and which new implementations should be designed with security embedded from the start rather than retrofitted later.
Next year, process industries will have to decide whether to pay now or pay much more later while explaining to boards, customers, regulators and impacted employees why known risks weren't addressed when action was still affordable and effective. The organizations that invest proactively will be the ones positioned to confidently pursue digital transformation, safeguard their supply chain and workforce relationships, and develop the operational resilience that increasingly makes businesses stand out as market leaders.
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