Why Deliberate OT Attacks Put Manufacturers at Risk

Events , Governance & Risk Management , Operational Technology (OT) 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     Credit Eligible Get Permission Dawn Cappelli, director, OT-CERT, Dragos 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. See Also: Attackers Target Backup Storage to Force Ransom Payment 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 across the industrial ecosystem. In this video interview with Information Security Media Group at RSAC Conference 2026, Cappelli also discussed: Why even well-funded companies neglect OT fundamentals; Why small and mid-sized enterprises don't know they're targets, and why they should; How artificial intelligence can help under-resourced OT operators respond to threats and the OT-CERT achieve near-term goals. Cappelli leads technology incident response efforts at Dragos, drawing on decades of cybersecurity and industrial control systems experience. She previously was CISO at Rockwell Automation and founded Carnegie Mellon University's CERT Insider Threat Center after beginning her career at the university as a technical engineer.