Manufacturing is the most targeted industry for ransomware, accounting for 65% of OT/ICS sector ransomware incidents in Q2 2025, while global attacks against manufacturers rose 56% year over year and average ransom demands climbed from $523,000 to nearly $1.2 million. The culprit is operational technology: programmable logic controllers and industrial control systems designed for uptime, not security, that may run decades-old software on networks never built for zero-trust principles. When the shop floor stops, so does the revenue.
Manufacturing is the most ransomware-targeted industry, with 65% of OT/ICS incidents and average ransom demands doubling to $1.2M. Here is what is driving the surge and what actually works.