Manufacturing isn't an occasional ransomware target anymore. Through the first months of 2026 it's consistently ranked among the most-hit sectors globally, and Canadian mid-sized manufacturers sit squarely in the range attackers favour.
Manufacturing was the single most-targeted sector tracked on ransomware leak sites in January 2026, and industrial ransomware incidents globally rose again in the second quarter of the year. This isn’t a one-off spike. Manufacturing has held a position among the top two or three most-targeted industries through most of 2026 reporting, competing with technology for the top spot.
Why manufacturers specifically: production downtime is extremely expensive per hour, older operational technology often can’t be patched as easily as office systems, and vendor and supply chain access points give attackers more ways in than a typical office environment has.
Why Manufacturers Are Disproportionately Targeted
Attackers are financially motivated, and manufacturers make an economically attractive target for a specific reason: the cost of downtime creates pressure to pay quickly. Industry data shows roughly a quarter of manufacturing ransomware incidents cause a full plant shutdown, and around three-quarters cause some level of operational disruption. A halted production line loses money by the hour in a way a delayed email server usually doesn’t, and attackers know it.
Aging operational technology compounds the problem. Equipment on a factory floor is often run for a decade or more, and patching it isn’t as simple as pushing a Windows update to an office laptop, sometimes it can’t be patched at all without replacing the equipment. That leaves a layer of the environment that’s effectively frozen in time from a security standpoint, even while the office network around it gets modernized.
Who’s Actually at Risk
Survey data from CIRA found that close to a quarter of Canadian organizations were hit by ransomware in the past year, and firms in the 51 to 200 employee range absorbed the most attacks, not the largest enterprises. That range describes a large share of Ontario’s manufacturing base directly. Attackers are opportunistic: they’re generally not selecting a specific company by name, they’re scanning broadly for the easiest available access, which means the businesses that assume they’re too small to be a target are often exactly the ones with the least defence in place.
How These Attacks Actually Get In
Recent industrial ransomware analysis points to a consistent pattern: attackers gain initial access, often through stolen or purchased credentials rather than a sophisticated technical breach, then disable endpoint security tools and harvest additional stored credentials before deploying ransomware. The technical breach itself is frequently the last step in a process that started with something much simpler, a phished password or a credential bought from a stolen-data marketplace.
What Actually Reduces the Risk
- Network segmentation between IT and OT. Keeping factory-floor systems on a separate network from office systems limits how far an attacker can move after gaining initial access.
- Phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication on email, VPN, and administrative accounts specifically, since credential theft is the most common starting point.
- Immutable, tested backups kept offline or otherwise out of reach of ransomware that specifically targets connected backup systems.
- Vendor and remote access review. Manufacturers often have more third-party access points, equipment vendors, integrators, remote monitoring services, than a typical office, and each one is a potential entry path.
What This Looks Like at ACT360
ACT360 works with manufacturers across Ontario who run exactly the kind of mixed IT and OT environment that makes this risk real: office systems alongside equipment that’s been in service for years and can’t simply be swapped out. Security planning in that context has to account for both layers together, not treat the factory floor as someone else’s problem separate from the network.
Jeffrey Bowles, Partner and Director of IT Services at ACT360, frames the goal this way:
“I’d rather we catch this now, in a review, than have it show up as an incident in six months.”
— Jeffrey Bowles, Partner & Director of IT Services, ACT360
Final Thought
Manufacturing’s position near the top of ransomware targeting data isn’t a fluke of reporting. It reflects a genuine mismatch between how costly downtime is on a production line and how much of the equipment running that line was never designed with modern security in mind. Closing that gap doesn’t require replacing the equipment. It requires treating the network around it with the same seriousness as the office side.
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