Critical infrastructure attacks more worrying than data breaches for most security pros

According to a new survey of 1,000 IT security professionals around the world, 74 percent are more concerned about a cyber attack on critical infrastructure than an enterprise data breach.

The study by Claroty reveals 62 percent of global respondents believe that industrial networks are properly safeguarded against cyber attacks and 60 percent believe their country’s critical infrastructure is adequately protected.

There are significant geographical differences though, respondents from Australia (93 percent) and Germany (96 percent) are much more confident in the overall safety of industrial networks compared to respondents from the UK, US and France.

"While IT and OT convergence unlocks business value in terms of operations efficiency, performance, and quality of services, it can now be detrimental because threats, both targeted and non-targeted, now have the freedom to maneuver from IT to OT environments and vice versa," says Dave Weinstein, chief security officer of Claroty. "Our mission is to help security practitioners to bridge the gap between IT and OT cybersecurity, ensuring that all bases are protected from cyber attack. This is even more critical in this new normal of largely remote workforces, which create additional burden on Chief Information Security Officers to remotely secure their production environments."

Globally, 45 percent of IT security professionals see electricity supply as the most vulnerable sector of critical infrastructure, followed by oil and gas (21 percent). Furthermore, 43 percent would put hacking at the top of the list of threats to industrial networks that they are most concerned about, followed by ransomware (33 percent).

When asked about where responsibility for protecting infrastructure lies, 100 percent of respondents from Germany believe it's with the government, followed by Australia (98 percent), the UK (91 percent), France (89 percent), and the US (87 percent).

The full report is available from the Claroty site.

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