A recent report by EEF, a U.K.-based manufacturing organization, cites manufacturing as the third most-targeted industry for cyber attacks, after government and financial services. This is in part due to the hackers' awareness of how manufacturers use high-tech or smart equipment in ways that are critical to their operations.

These smart machines create new risks. "In the past, you had standalone factory equipment that wasn't connected to other machines and enterprise systems in the internet; now they're all connected. Those interconnections make equipment vulnerable to cyber attacks," Graf says.

For more information on manufacturing cyber risks, read the article "Will the Rise of Intelligent Machines Make or Break the Independent Agent?" published in Independent Agent.