Why Deliberate OT Attacks Put Manufacturers at Risk

Dragos' Dawn Cappelli on Evolving OT Threats and Safety Risks in Manufacturing Tom Field (SecurityEditor) • March 27, 2026

Adversaries have moved from incidentally hitting operational technology environments to deliberately mapping industrial control loops, studying how physical processes work to enable future disruption. For manufacturers, the stakes extend beyond data and downtime to the safety of workers and facilities.

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Dawn Cappelli, director of OT-CERT at Dragos, said manufacturers often underestimate how far that risk reaches. "These ransomware groups realize that if they bring down manufacturing operations, they are more likely to pay, and so they target those organizations," Cappelli said.

She warned that small manufacturers and suppliers create systemic risk. Many lack dedicated security resources yet played essential roles in larger supply chains. Disruptions at these smaller entities could cascade upstream, forcing major manufacturers to halt operations and exposing broader weaknesses ...