MANUFACTURING CYBERSECURITY BENCHMARKING
The Benchmark Advantage:
How Your Manufacturing Cyber Risk Compares
Across 21 manufacturers, the data shows a clear performance gap between average and stronger cybersecurity programs. Benchmarking helps leaders understand where cyber risk is concentrated, how performance differs across organizations and which foundational practices are associated with lower risk.
What Is a Manufacturing Cybersecurity Benchmark?
A manufacturing cybersecurity benchmark compares cybersecurity assessment results across multiple manufacturers to show how risk patterns, control gaps and performance levels differ.
Instead of looking at one organization in isolation, benchmarking places findings in context. It helps leaders see whether a result is common, unusually severe or significantly better than what appears elsewhere.
That context makes the benchmark more than a scorecard. It becomes a way to understand where risk is concentrated, which controls are most often missing and what stronger-performing manufacturers tend to do differently.
Why Does Cybersecurity Benchmarking Matter for Manufacturers?
A security finding on its own may tell a manufacturer that something is wrong. A benchmark helps explain how much it matters.
That matters because manufacturers do not need to improve everything at once. They need to understand which issues most affect exposure, which gaps appear most often across peer environments and which foundational practices are associated with lower risk.
Benchmarking also helps leadership prioritize investment. When leaders can see how their environment compares with others, they can make better decisions about what deserves attention first and what improvements are most likely to reduce long-term risk.
Cybersecuirty Risk Looks Different When You Have Something to Copare It To
A security finding on its own tells you something is wrong. A benchmark helps tell you how much it matters.
Using cybersecurity assessment data from 21 manufacturers, we compared the concentration of high-risk findings across organizations to understand how performance differs and what separates manufacturers carrying significantly less risk from the rest.
The goal is not to create an industry scorecard. It is to provide context. By seeing where risk concentrates, how widely performance varies and which practices are associated with stronger results, manufacturers can make better decisions about what deserves attention first.
21
Manufacturers
Benchmarked
10.6
Average High-Risk
Issues
2
Lowest High-Risk
Count
19
Highest High-Risk
Count
WHERE MANUFACUTERS DIFFER
What Best-in-Class Manufacturing Cybersecurity Looks Like
Across the 21 manufacturers in this benchmark, the average company had 10.6 high-risk issues. However, that average hides a more important truth: manufacturers do not all carry risk at the same level.
The strongest performer had only 2 high-risk issues while the highest-risk manufacturer had 19. That difference shows that better outcomes already exist and that the performance gap is substantial.
Best-in-class manufacturing cybersecurity is not about perfection. It is about control. The organizations that perform better tend to identify risk earlier, focus on the most important gaps, and act before issues become normalized.
Two priorities stood out most clearly: identity governance and patch management. Together, those fundamentals helped the top performer achieve 80% fewer vulnerabilities than average, reinforcing one of the clearest lessons from the data: stronger performance often comes from covering the basics consistently well.
COMMON ACCESS AND CONTROL GAPS
Six Access Issues That Increase Manufacturing Cyber Risk
The benchmark shows that better cybersecurity performance is often driven by stronger control over foundational risks. In manufacturing environments, those risks frequently appear as recurring access and governance gaps that are difficult to detect until they begin affecting visibility, accountability or operational stability.
This graphic highlights six of the most common issues: unstandardized access paths, inconsistent identity controls, aging access systems, limited activity visibility, uncontrolled third-party access and lack of access ownership. Together, these gaps can expand exposure, slow response and make it harder to manage cyber risk consistently across the environment.
Understanding where these issues exist is a critical step in building a stronger baseline, prioritizing improvements and reducing long-term risk. It also helps leaders focus resources where they can have the greatest operational and security impact across systems, teams and business priorities.
Six Access Issues That Increase Manufacturing Cyber Risk
Manufacturing cyber risk often grows through repeated access and control weaknesses rather than a single dramatic failure. Multiple access paths can create inconsistency, while fragmented identity controls can weaken accountability. Older access systems may lack modern protections, and limited activity visibility can make suspicious behavior harder to detect. Third-party access may remain broader than intended, while unclear ownership can leave important decisions without clear accountability.
Together, these conditions show why manufacturers should treat access governance as a core part of cybersecurity performance rather than a secondary administrative task.
FOUNDATIONAL BEST PRACTICES
Where Manufacturers Should Start to Reduce Cyber Risk
The benchmark points to a practical answer: the manufacturers that perform best are not necessarily the ones doing the most. Rather, they are often the ones doing the fundamentals earlier and more consistently.
That means stronger visibility, clearer ownership and more disciplined follow-through on the controls that reduce everyday exposure. Over time, that consistency creates a more stable security foundation and makes improvement easier to sustain.
That starts with understanding your current environment before comparing it to others. A baseline assessment gives manufacturing leaders the context needed to identify major gaps, prioritize the right actions and measure progress over time.
These are foundational moves, but in manufacturing environments, such discipline is often what creates the biggest long-term difference. It helps reduce recurring exposure before it becomes a larger operational problem and gives leaders a more reliable approach for building resilience over time.
WHAT STRONGER PERFORMERS PRIORITIZE
How Should Manufactures Prioritize Cybersecurity Improvements?
Manufacturers rarely struggle to find issues. They struggle to decide which ones deserve action first.
Benchmarking improves prioritization because it adds proportion. It helps leaders see which categories are creating the largest performance gap relative to peers and where focused action is likely to reduce the most exposure.
A practical prioritization process looks like this:
- Establish a baseline assessment
- Compare results to peer benchmarks
- Identify the largest risk gaps
- Focus on foundational categories first
- Reassess over time to track measurable improvement
This is one of the biggest advantages of benchmark data. It turns cybersecurity from a list of disconnected tasks into a sequence of business decisions.
TURN INSIGHTS INTO ACTON
How Manurers Can Use Cybersecurity Benchmarking
What does the benchmark say about manufacturing cyber-risk?
Across the benchmark, a clear pattern emerges manufacturers are not all carrying cyber risk the same way. The same issue categories appear across many environments, but the gap between average and stronger performers is significant. What separates them is not usually size or complexity. It is how early foundational risks are identified, prioritized and addressed.
What is a manufacturing cybersecurity benchmark?
A manufacturing cybersecurity benchmark compares assessment findings across multiple organizations to show how cyber risk, control gaps and security performance differ. This helps leaders understand whether their environment is carrying more risk than peers, where the most meaningful gaps appear and which fundamentals are associated with stronger outcomes.
Why does cybersecurity benchmarking matter for manufacturers?
Cybersecurity benchmarking matters because it gives manufacturers context, not just findings. Without comparison, leaders may know a problem exists but not whether it represents a minor gap or a major performance issue. Benchmarking helps teams focus on what matters most and prioritize improvements that are more likely to reduce risk across the environment.
How should manufacturers use the benchmark data?
Benchmark data is most useful when it improves prioritization. Manufacturers should establish a baseline, compare results to peers, identify the biggest gaps and focus first on foundational issues that reduce exposure most effectively.
How should manufacturers use the benchmark data?
Manufacturers should use benchmark data to establish a baseline, compare performance, identify recurring risk patterns and focus first on the categories creating the largest exposure. Used this way, benchmarking becomes a decision-making tool. It helps leadership determine where to invest, which controls need the most attention and how to measure progress over time.
What does this mean for manufacturing leaders?
It means cybersecurity decisions should be guided by context as well as findings. Leaders do not need to solve every issue at once. They need to understand where risk is concentrated, which gaps matter most and which foundational practices lead to stronger outcomes. Benchmarking helps turn cybersecurity from a reactive process into a more deliberate improvement strategy.
WHAT YOU CAN DO NEXT
Build a clearer cybersecurity roadmap.
Use benchmark data to understand your current exposure, prioritize high-impact gaps