Security solutions company Kaspersky Lab has discovered malware to be the most common cause of data loss incidents for manufacturers.
The Kaspersky Lab 2014 IT Security Risks report discovered that 21% of the organisations it surveyed suffered a loss of intellectual property (IP) due to security breaches within the past year.
The report named software vulnerabilities, theft of mobile devices and network intrusion as other sources of IP leakage for manufacturers.
The survey involved almost 4 000 IT managers across 27 countries and was conducted by Kaspersky Lab in partnership with B2B International.
The report states that more than a third of employees (38%) take up to two days to notify their employers of stolen mobile devices, and 9% of employees wait three to five days.
Also, the percentage of employees who notified their employers the same day the incident occurred decreased from 60% to 50% from 2013 to 2014.
This delay can create a significant window of vulnerability, and makes the loss of sensitive business data more likely.
In light of these findings, manufacturing companies should take the time to understand the impact these threats and breaches can have on their business, says Riaan Badenhorst, MD of Kaspersky Lab Africa.
Badenhorst believes that a business's IP is critical to its overall success and if compromised it will lose its competitive-edge and market innovation advantage.
According to Badenhorst, a software security strategy should be investigated and implemented within a manufacturing business.
He recommends that any security software used by manufacturing companies should include the ability to control applications, close software vulnerabilities and maintain control over mobile devices that their employees are using as these are the three attack vectors often used by advanced and emerging cyber threats.
"In a highly competitive global economy, businesses rise to leadership or sink into bankruptcy on very slim profit margins. Most often, a business's most decisive advantage comes in the form of research and development insight or a proprietary high-tech solution which, in the case of manufacturers, can help businesses produce items more efficiently than their competitors," says Badenhorst.
If a competitor is able to obtain this insight, especially without incurring the initial research and development costs, then that competitor now has a significant business advantage, he adds.
Businesses failing in the manufacturing sector, which is the key sector to the continued gross domestic product growth of the local economy, may result in jobs being lost and the poor performance of this sector and economy at large, concludes Badenhorst.
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