The Hidden Vulnerability in Your Digital Transformation Strategy

Key takeaways:

• Food and beverage plants connecting shop-floor systems to cloud dashboards and ERP (enterprise resource planning) are unintentionally creating new attack paths between OT (operational technology — production equipment and control systems) and IT (information technology — business systems).
• Fresh data shows the threat is real: the 2025 Verizon DBIR reports 44% of all breaches involved ransomware and that third‑party involvement doubled to 30% — a direct warning for vendor remote access and SaaS data pipes common in plant‑to‑boardroom integration.
• OT‑focused threat intelligence from Dragos finds OT ransomware activity surged by more than 87% year over year and highlights malware that manipulates industrial protocols (e.g., Modbus), underscoring the risk to production, safety, and quality. 
• In food and beverage specifically, nearly 90% of respondents reported one or more attacks originating via third‑party supplier access, and over 70% experienced $100k or more in financial losses from cyber incidents affecting cyber‑physical systems.
• The fix is not to “slow down digital,” but to engineer security into data integration. Segment OT/IT, broker data through an industrial DMZ (demilitarized zone), harden identities and remote access, and monitor the OT network with tooling built for industrial protocols. The CISA Cross‑Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs) offer a prioritized starting point.

The rush to Industry 4.0 and the unseen exposure

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) promises higher yield, less waste, and real‑time quality. In food manufacturing, that often means layering IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) sensors, connecting MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) and historians to cloud analytics, and feeding board‑level KPIs with live OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness), scrap, and throughput metrics.

The hidden vulnerability? Every new integration is a new interface, and therefore a potential attack surface. When plants prioritize speed (standing up cloud connectors, vendor remote tools, or quick OT-IT links) without a security architecture, these interfaces can bypass traditional controls and open a path from internet‑facing services into production lines.

Recent evidence is proof. Verizon’s 2025 DBIR notes that exploitation of vulnerabilities hit 20% of initial access vectors (up 34% YoY) and that edge devices and VPNs were aggressively targeted, with patching only 54% fully remediated and a median of 32 days to fix. In the same dataset, ransomware was present in 44% of breaches and third‑party involvement in breaches doubled to 30%. These are precisely the control points many food plants touch when they push telemetry to the cloud or enable integrator/vendor access.

In addition, OT‑targeting ransomware activity jumped by more than 87% within the last year, while new malware families designed for industrial environments emerged — such as FrostyGoop, which manipulates Modbus/TCP traffic to disrupt physical processes. Dragos’ report also flags tens of thousands of internet‑exposed ICS devices using Modbus, a reminder that insecure industrial protocols can become the shortest path to outage. 

Looking more specifically at food and beverage, Claroty’s 2024 sector snapshot reports more than 70% of respondents suffered significant financial losses from CPS (cyber‑physical systems) incidents; nearly 30% lost over $1 million. Third‑party supplier access was implicated in about 90% of attacks, and 57% of organizations admit they have only partial or no understanding of those third‑party connections.

Where the OT-IT gap appears (and why it matters)

OT prioritizes safety and availability. IT prioritizes confidentiality and integrity. Add 30‑year‑old controllers, flat networks, vendor‑managed machines, and time‑sensitive production windows, and you get a mismatch: IT controls often don’t map neatly onto OT realities.

Common gaps that show up in digital transformation:

• Flat or lightly segmented networks. Plant floor devices (PLCs, HMIs, historians) can reach business systems directly; conversely, a compromised laptop in the office can “see” the line.
• Identity bridging without boundaries. Shared or domain‑trusted credentials traverse OT and IT; once an attacker phishes a cloud user or steals a token (a growing trend), lateral movement becomes trivial. Verizon’s DBIR report notes the sustained dominance of stolen credentials in the “system intrusion” pattern for manufacturing.
• Third‑party remote access sprawl. Integrators, OEMs, and analytics vendors maintain persistent tunnels (often nested or daisy‑chained) into critical equipment. The rise in third‑party involvement in breaches and vendor-originated attacks should ring alarms.
• Insecure protocol exposure. Legacy industrial protocols (e.g., Modbus, some OPC variants) were not designed for authentication or encryption. The Dragos report’s highlight of malware that manipulates Modbus/TCP shows how easily process signals can be spoofed when traffic isn’t brokered and inspected.

How plant‑to‑boardroom integration creates new attack paths (real‑world patterns)

Below are realistic patterns we see in food plants modernizing data flows. Even if the technology names differ in your environment, the risks rhyme.

1. Historian → cloud → board dashboard

A site pushes historian tags (temperatures, flow, batch IDs) to a cloud data lake for consolidated KPI reporting. To “speed delivery,” engineers permit outbound connections from Level 3 (or deeper) to the internet, using a long‑lived service account. Months later, a credential‑stealer on a contractor’s laptop harvests that token. Attackers pivot from the data pipeline to on‑prem OT brokers, then into on‑site Windows servers.

Why this fails: No OT DMZ broker, overly permissive egress, and no short‑lived credentials. Verizon DBIR’s spotlight on infostealer‑harvested enterprise credentials and 44% ransomware prevalence maps here.

2. MES-ERP bidirectional sync

To automate finance and supply chain, MES and ERP exchange batch genealogy and inventory movements. For convenience, the integration team opens a two‑way trust and maps shared service accounts from AD into the OT network. A phish grants attackers privileged IT access; trust paths (and SMB/RDP allowed through a firewall exception) carry the intrusion into OT.

Why this fails: Identity trust without domain separation; “any‑to‑any” rules between networks; weak jump‑host governance. System intrusion, social engineering, and basic web app attacks represent 85% of manufacturing breaches, and third‑party involvement is rising — both match this pattern.

3. OEM remote maintenance for fillers, CIP skids, or packaging lines

Vendors install their own remote tools to update PLC logic or HMI screens. Sessions pass from vendor laptop → unmanaged router → line controller, often with shared passwords. Adversaries can exploit weak remote access configurations and exposed OT assets, and vendors are a frequent origin of attacks in food and beverage.

Why this fails: Unbrokered remote access, shared credentials, and no session recording or protocol‑level inspection. 

Consequences unique to food manufacturing

• Food safety and compliance: Manipulated setpoints (temperature, pH, time, CIP cycles) can compromise lethality or sanitation and trigger recalls.
• Quality and yield: Tampered recipe parameters or line speeds can silently degrade product quality before SPC (statistical process control) flags it.
• Worker safety and public health: Claroty’s food and beverage respondents reported public safety impacts (22%) and human injury (19%) after CPS incidents.
• Financial and reputational damage: More than 70% of respondents reported $100,000 or more in losses, with 36% paying over $1 million to resolve incidents. This shows how quickly downtime and extortion bleed margins in high‑throughput, low‑tolerance environments.

How to close the OT-IT gap (without slowing transformation)

1. Draw the “data map” before you draw the network rules. List every data flow from plant to boardroom: tag source → collector → broker/DMZ → cloud/SaaS → dashboard, including identities, secrets, and protocols on each hop. The deliverable is a data exchange register owned jointly by OT, IT, and the line of business.
2. Build a proper industrial DMZ (Level 3.5). No direct OT‑to‑cloud connectivity. Terminate all outbound OT data flows in a brokered DMZ using a unidirectional gateway (data diode) where feasible, or tightly controlled proxies with TLS termination, protocol break, logging, and inspection. This aligns to CISA’s prioritized CPG controls for segmentation and monitoring. 
3. Separate identities and and remove trust shortcuts: Maintain separate AD/identity realms for OT and IT and avoid blanket trusts. Use PAM (Privileged Access Management) with short‑lived credentials for integrations and maintenance. Enforce MFA on all remote paths into OT, including vendor access, and record sessions.
4. Broker remote access, don’t tunnel it. No vendor jump‑boxes that bypass inspection. Require reverse‑proxied connections that land in the DMZ, then traverse a controlled jump host into OT, with per‑session approval, protocol allow‑listing (e.g., OPC UA with security, not raw Modbus/DA), and recording. Attacks leveraging weak remote access make this non‑negotiable.
5. Harden industrial protocols at the boundary. Prefer OPC UA with encryption and authentication, MQTT over TLS with client certs, and signed payloads where supported. Where legacy protocols (e.g., Modbus/TCP) must cross zones, proxy and inspect; never expose directly to the internet.
6. Treat SaaS connectors and APIs as critical infrastructure. Inventory every cloud connector, token, and secret; rotate frequently and scope to least privilege. Infostealer‑harvested credentials correlate with ransomware disclosures, so assume tokens will leak and design containment.
7. Monitor OT like OT (not like IT). Adopt network monitoring that understands industrial protocols and can baseline process behavior (tags, function codes). Integrate alerts into existing SOC workflows, but avoid noisy IT signatures that miss OT signals.
8. Patch where it counts, compensate where you can’t. Focus on edge devices, VPNs, and publicly exposed services — these are active targets and remediation is often slow. Where patching PLCs is infeasible, add compensating controls (segmentation, allow‑lists, and protocol breaks).
9. Use an OT‑aware incident response (IR) playbook. Tabletop a “data‑pipe compromise” scenario: attacker steals a cloud token, pivots to DMZ, and reaches Level 3. Measure time to isolate flows, revoke tokens, and maintain safe state on lines mid‑batch.

Governance: who owns what?

• Operations owns process risk and asset criticality (hazards, CCPs/HACCP, CIP dependencies).
• IT/Security owns identity, logging, and cloud controls.
• Engineering owns protocol choices, network zones, and vendor management.
• Finance/leadership owns risk appetite and funds the controls that keep transformation safe.

A cross‑functional OT security council that meets monthly can arbitrate changes to the data exchange register, vendor onboarding, and exceptions.

90‑day action plan (high‑impact, low‑regret)

• Week 1-2: Inventory all plant‑to‑cloud connectors, third‑party remote access paths, and active tokens/secrets; kill or rotate anything unused or over‑privileged. (This directly addresses the third‑party and credential risks surging in recent breach data.)
• Week 3-6: Stand up a Level 3.5 DMZ (even minimally): broker outbound historian/MES flows, deploy a jump host, and turn off direct OT‑to‑internet egress. Map this to CISA CPGs for segmentation and monitoring. 
• Week 7-10: Enforce PAM + MFA for every admin and vendor touching OT; implement session recording and time‑boxed approvals.
• Week 11-13: Deploy OT‑aware network monitoring on the most critical lines (pasteurization, retort, aseptic packaging); tune alerts to process anomalies (not just IP/port).
• By day 90: Run a tabletop on a compromised integration flow; measure containment time and refine the playbook.

What “good” looks like (architecture in words)

1. Zone/Conduit model: Shop floor segmented into cell/area zones; Level 3.5 industrial DMZ as the single exchange point; IT and cloud live beyond that DMZ.
2. One‑way data where possible: For compliance‑critical metrics (e.g., temperature, pH), use data diodes or strict reverse proxies with payload validation.
3. No shared trust: OT and IT identities are separate; integrations use scoped service principals that expire.
4. Vendor access through a broker: No direct tunnels; sessions are recorded and approved; only necessary protocols allowed.
5. Continuous detection: OT‑native visibility feeds your SOC with enriched context (line, asset, tag), enabling faster, safer response.

Your Industry 4.0 roadmap only succeeds if the security architecture travels with the data. The real threat isn’t the new sensor or the shiny dashboard — it’s the unseen path that connects them. Close the OT-IT gap with a brokered architecture, disciplined identities, and OT‑aware monitoring, and you’ll unlock the value of digital transformation without compromising production, safety, or brand trust.