How to Avoid Bankruptcy in Industrial Digitalization

How Integrated Industrial Cybersecurity Solutions Protect OT Networks and Reduce the Cost of Critical Incidents

Industrial digital transformation has been a topic of discussion for over a decade—but only now is the real tipping point arriving. According to the VDC Research report Securing OT with Purpose-Built Solutions, just 7.6% of industrial organizations currently consider themselves fully digital. That number is expected to soar to 63.6% within the next two years.

What’s driving this rapid shift? Economic pressure, the need to boost operational efficiency, and the increasing accessibility of technologies like the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and edge computing. As a result, companies across the industrial sector are rushing to modernize—often without fully accounting for the cybersecurity risks that come with it.

The Upside: Efficiency, Safety, and Real-Time Intelligence

Digitalization offers tangible benefits. Many enterprises have already deployed asset management, maintenance, and supply chain systems to cut downtime and reduce costs. More advanced implementations—such as digital twins and predictive analytics—help optimize processes, maximize output, and reduce material waste.

By integrating data between IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology) systems, organizations can make faster, smarter decisions based on real-time data. This convergence is essential for achieving true digital maturity—but it also introduces new vulnerabilities.

The Downside: Cyber Risks Grow with Integration

The very act of connecting formerly isolated systems opens the door to cyberattacks and technical failures. In legacy OT environments, air gaps and proprietary networks offered natural insulation. That protection is eroding as digital integration accelerates.

An attack on an OT system can have wide-reaching consequences:

• Increased product defects
• Equipment damage
• Production chain disruption
• Serious safety risks to employees

Even short outages can lead to multimillion-dollar losses, reputational harm, and long recovery periods.

Top Barriers to Industrial Digitalization

According to the VDC report, cybersecurity is now the #1 obstacle to industrial digital transformation, cited by nearly 40% of respondents. Two other major blockers are budget constraints and aging equipment, both of which make modernization more complex and costly.

When it comes to cybersecurity, the leading concerns include:

• Lack of resources dedicated to OT security
• Inadequate cybersecurity in legacy infrastructure
• Challenges with meeting regulatory compliance

These are not minor issues—they’re deal-breakers. Without addressing them, digitalization efforts are at serious risk of stalling or failing altogether.

The True Cost of a Cyber Incident

Security leaders widely recommend a risk-based approach to cybersecurity investment—one that reflects an organization’s specific industry, risk tolerance, and threat exposure.

The VDC report sheds light on the financial fallout of OT incidents in 2023–2024. Among companies hit by impactful breaches, 25% reported damages exceeding $5 million. These costs stem from:

• Emergency response and mitigation
• Lost revenue and halted production
• Equipment repairs and wasted materials

A major contributor to these losses is unplanned downtime—a problem digitalization is meant to reduce, but which often spikes after an attack. The most common outage durations were 4–12 hours and 12–24 hours, with each affecting about a third of reported cases.

Why Protecting OT Systems Is So Difficult

Despite the urgency and regulatory pressure, securing OT networks is notoriously difficult. Most organizations face a similar set of challenges:

• Limited network visibility: Many OT systems use proprietary protocols incompatible with traditional IT monitoring tools.
• Skill gaps: There’s a shortage of professionals who understand both cybersecurity and industrial systems.
• Poor segmentation: Production requirements often prevent isolating vulnerable equipment from the rest of the network.
• Insecure IIoT devices: Many have default settings, outdated firmware, or lack basic protections.
• Legacy software: Updates and patches are slow to deploy due to operational constraints and the need for extensive testing.
• Lack of incident response plans: Most companies don’t have a playbook for OT-specific cyber disruptions.

Some of these issues stem from industry-wide limitations, but many can be mitigated with the right tools.

The Case for Specialized Security Solutions

While OT security projects are complex, they are far more manageable with purpose-built tools designed specifically for industrial environments. Two foundational capabilities stand out:

• Asset and traffic monitoring (e.g., Kaspersky Industrial Cybersecurity for Networks)
• Endpoint protection (e.g., Kaspersky Industrial Cybersecurity for Nodes)

These tools support a defense-in-depth strategy tailored to industrial systems. They help prevent disruptions by operating efficiently in resource-constrained environments—avoiding the kind of issues seen in generalized security solutions, such as the CrowdStrike update failure that crippled enterprise systems worldwide.

Looking ahead, industrial cybersecurity will evolve alongside network architecture. Technologies like SD-WAN and SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) are expected to play a larger role. The end goal is secure-by-design manufacturing, where cybersecurity is embedded in industrial systems from the start—especially at the device level.

Deployment Isn’t Just IT’s Job

Rolling out OT security solutions isn’t a task that can be handed off to IT alone. It requires collaboration between IT, operations, and engineering teams.

To streamline adoption and reduce friction, organizations should avoid a patchwork of disconnected tools. According to VDC Research, roughly 60% of enterprises now prefer to source all security tools from a single vendor. This simplifies integration, training, and support.

Security That Pays for Itself

Despite initial costs and deployment challenges, specialized security tools deliver measurable ROI.

Between 2023 and 2024:

• Companies using network and device monitoring reduced average incidents from 2.7 to 2.2 per year
• Those with basic endpoint protection cut incidents from 2.1 to 1.6
• In contrast, firms neglecting OT security suffered an average of 3.8 incidents annually—nearly twice as many as their protected peers

The data is clear: proactive OT cybersecurity reduces risk, downtime, and cost.

Final Thoughts

Digital transformation is no longer optional—it’s essential. But industrial enterprises must understand that cybersecurity is the foundation, not the final step.

By investing in integrated, OT-aware solutions and aligning IT and operational teams around security goals, organizations can modernize with confidence. The alternative isn’t just inefficiency—it’s potential bankruptcy after a single catastrophic breach.

In the digital industrial era, resilience isn’t a luxury—it’s survival.