Americans most worried about attacks on the financial sector

Americans are more worried about a cyberattack disrupting the financial and banking system than attacks against hospital/emergency services, voting systems or power grid/energy supply companies.

This is among the findings of a survey by ESET to mark National Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience Month, which surveyed 1,500 Americans to discover their views on critical infrastructure attacks.

It also finds that 58 percent of people say that they believe it is 'likely' that the US will suffer a large scale disruption on CI in the next two years and people are most worried about cyberattacks on the financial sector (26 percent) followed by power grid/energy distributors (24 percent), and hospitals (18 percent).

As systems become more connected, the risks of infrastructure being hit by an attack increase. Interestingly only eight percent of those surveyed are worried about attacks on internet service providers, despite these being in the front line against DDoS and other threats.

Over half are aware that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power supplies in some countries -- such as the 2016 attack in the Ukraine. But the report reveals a high level of skepticism about the transparency and availability of information on what causes energy grid disruptions. Nearly 40 percent of respondents indicate that they believe there has been a cyberattack in the US that has caused a blackout, but was just not made public.

You can read more about the findings on the ESET blog.

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