Shieldworkz Global OT and IoT Threat Landscape Report 2025

Keypoints

• The report typically includes sections on About Shieldworkz, Report Methodology & Data Integrity, detailed threat landscape analysis, key findings, projections, and strategic outlook for 2025, covering global cyberattack trends on OT/IoT systems.
• Data is primarily sourced from a global honeypot network monitoring 39 million attacks daily across over 95 cities, corroborated with intelligence from dark web activity, research institutions, and government partners.
• Key findings reveal industrialization of cybercrime, with AI enabling sophisticated autonomous malware and automated attack processes, alongside increased recruitment by threat groups such as RansomHub and LockBit-NG.
• Critical infrastructure sectors, especially energy, manufacturing, and healthcare, face intensified assaults, with 79% surge in attacks on the energy sector and a 17% increase in internet-accessible ICS ports, heightening exposure.
• State-sponsored APTs from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran conduct prolonged reconnaissance and covert operations, exemplified by campaigns like APT 41’s attack on India’s power grid, signaling geopolitical motivations.
• Persistent systemic vulnerabilities exist due to poor IT-OT segregation, shadow assets, lack of incident response maturity, and unpatched “Forever Day” vulnerabilities amounting to 13% of serious OT flaws.
• The report notes a 45% underreporting rate of industrial attacks in Asia, undermining collective threat intelligence and masking the real scale of risks.
• Emerging trends include multi-vector attack campaigns combining phishing, zero-day exploits, and social engineering, with a forecast of increased targeting of remote and high-value industrial assets in 2025.
• AI is leveraged extensively by adversaries for reconnaissance, malware evolutions, and network infiltration, marking a shift to intelligence-led, proactive resilience strategies for OT security.
• Additional insights detail recruitment patterns of threat affiliates, shifts in loyalty, evolving botnet capabilities, major sectoral threats, and challenges implementing IEC 62443 control standards globally.