New Delhi, Dec 22 (IANS): A majority of employees believe that robot-led production processes will be disrupted for weeks following a cyberattack or malfunction, a new study showed on Thursday.

According to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, about 82 per cent believe the full recovery will take a few days or longer.

Most employees in companies with functioning production robots were aware of possible cybersecurity risks, according to the study.

Only 8 per cent of them believed that disabled robots can be fixed immediately in case of a cyberattack, while more than half (51 per cent) expect that recovery operations would take a few weeks or longer, and more.

However, the optimistic respondents (31 per cent) are of the opinion that a return to normal production processes could happen within a few days, said the study.

"In this study we asked respondents to assess not only the level of companies' robotisation but also their ability to resist related cyber risks. It turned out that many employees had mixed feelings when assessing how protected robots are. They are confident that it's necessary to pay more attention to their security and sceptical about how quickly a robot can recover after a cyber incident," said Andrey Suvorov, Head of KasperskyOS Business Unit.

Moreover, another significant finding of the survey revealed that people are concerned about third-party control and regulation of robots and their autonomy.

Meanwhile, 69 per cent of respondents say that it's unclear who takes ultimate responsibility if robots fail during an equipment malfunction or a cyberattack.

The vast majority of respondents (75 per cent) believe that robots can improve production efficiency, but only when supervised by humans, the study added.

Only a quarter of employees (15 per cent) are willing to completely entrust the management of any production process to an AI robot.