SonicWall reported that malicious traffic aimed at the manufacturing sector fell 56.2% year over year in the first half of 2026, the steepest decline of any vertical it tracks, while total threat volume against the industry remained at 474 million detections over the period. The company attributed the drop to improved detection tools rather than fewer attacks, and said the attack surface is widening as manufacturers connect operational technology such as networked security cameras, industrial sensors and smart building controls. A five-year-old Hikvision camera vulnerability generated 43 million hits, the largest internet-connected attack signature across any tracked industry, and IoT attacks were the second-largest category by volume. Ten ransomware groups were active against manufacturing networks, with the Zhen malware family accounting for 22.2 million hits on just two devices; manufacturing also had the highest SCADA attack detection rate.