Tripwire Survey: 70 Percent of Energy Security Professionals Concerned About ‘Catastrophic Failure’ From Cyberthreats

Tripwire,
Inc., a leading global provider of security and compliance solutions
for enterprises and industrial organizations, today announced the
results of a survey conducted by Dimensional Research examining
industrial control systems (ICS) security in the energy industry. The
survey was conducted in March, and its respondents included 151 IT and
operational technology (OT) security professionals at energy and oil and
gas companies.

According to the survey, 70 percent of respondents are concerned that a
successful cyberattack could cause a catastrophic failure, such as an
explosion. With widespread recognition of the physical threat
cyberattacks present against the energy and oil and gas industry, 97
percent are concerned that attacks could cause operational shutdowns,
and 96 percent believe they could impact the safety of their employees.

"Energy companies have accepted the reality that digital threats can
have tangible consequences," said Tim Erlin, vice president of product
management and strategy at Tripwire. "This perception is perhaps
heightened by recent attacks that were specifically designed to affect
physical operations and have proven capable of doing so."

Respondents were also asked about their organizations’ security
investments, with the following results:

• While 65 percent feel their company invests sufficiently in ICS
  security, 62 percent said that lack of budget and investment continues
  to be the biggest barrier in meeting ICS security goals.
• Of those who said their company does not invest sufficiently, 56
  percent believe it would take a significant attack to get their
  companies to a proper level of investment.
• Ninety-one percent are worried about attacks on their ICS. Fifty-nine
  percent said their companies increased security investments because of
  ICS-targeted attacks like Trisis/Triton, Industroyer/CrashOverride and
  Stuxnet.
• Forty-five percent said ransomware has had the most significant impact
  in increasing their security investment, compared to 44 percent who
  said Trisis/Triton and Industroyer/CrashOverride and 11 percent who
  said Stuxnet.

It is widely recommended that organizations properly secure their
critical infrastructure ICS with a layered approach, commonly referred
to as Defense in Depth. In the survey, only 35 percent of respondents
said they implement a multilayered approach to ICS security. Thirty-four
percent said they focus primarily on network level security, and 14
percent said ICS device security.

Erlin added: "It's encouraging to see that companies have increased
their security investment somewhat. However, it’s concerning that more
than half would wait for an attack to happen before investing properly,
given what's at stake with critical infrastructure. The energy industry
should invest in establishing more robust cybersecurity strategies, with
a proper foundation of critical security controls and layers of defense."

About Tripwire

Tripwire is a leading provider of integrity assurance solutions that
improve security, compliance and IT operations in enterprises,
industrial organizations, service providers and government agencies.
Tripwire solutions are based on high-fidelity asset visibility and deep
endpoint intelligence combined with business context; together, these
solutions integrate and automate security and IT operations. Tripwire’s
enterprise-class portfolio includes asset discovery, vulnerability
management, log collection, file integrity monitoring, and configuration
management that supports all widely used industry-standard frameworks.

Learn more at www.tripwire.com,
get security news, trends and insights at www.tripwire.com/blog,
or follow us on Twitter @TripwireInc.

For more information please visit: https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/ics-security/70-percent-energy-security-pros-fear-digital-attacks-produce-catastrophic-failure/.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180418005011/en/

News by QuoteMedia

www.quotemedia.com