The Industrial Internet of Things, or Industry 4.0, is improving operational efficiencies for global industrial systems on a scale never seen before. The IIoT holds great potential for improved communications, productivity, quality control, supply chain efficiencies and overall business operations. With this broader connectivity, comes new attack vectors, vulnerabilities and opportunities for hackers. When you start to consider the various IIoT cyber-attacks and exploits in the last decade, the damages are startling. In our infographic below we’ve build out a timeline with real-life security incidents as a way to show the magnitude of threats. Of course many of these are exploits where a vulnerability was found and exposed by researchers and gained media attention. For example, the well-known Miller/Valasek Jeep hack chronicled by Wired Magazine and just this week the cybersecurity research duo was at it again, demonstrating the full consequences of a digital attack, had a security patch not been updated. The green spots on the timeline represent actual attacks carried out by malicious hackers, like the Target data breach, or most recently the Ukraine Power Grid hack that occurred in December, where hackers used stolen credentials to gain remote access to the grid and cut power to over 200,000 customers.