April 8, 2016 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

The energy sector faces more cyber attacks than any other industry, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Credit: Stuart Miles /freedigitalphotos.net

Newly released survey results from Tripwire back this up.

In a survey of more than 150 information technology professionals in the energy, utilities, and oil and gas industries, conducted in November 2015, Tripwire found that 77 percent of those surveyed had experienced a rise in successful cyber attacks in the last 12 months. In addition, 68 percent of the respondents said the rate of successful cyber attacks had increased by more than 20 percent in just the last month.

In the last 12 months, 78 percent of the respondents said they experienced a cyber attack from an external source, and 30 percent have seen an attack from an inside employee. Nearly 45 percent indicated they have not gathered enough information to identify the sources of cyber attacks on their organizations. And 22 percent admitted their organizations do not have business processes to identify sensitive and confidential information.

And in the oblivious category: Energy executives were more than twice as likely to believe their organization detected every cyber attack (43 percent) than non-executives (17 percent).

"It's tempting to believe that this increase in attacks is horizontal across industries, but the data shows that energy organizations are experiencing a disproportionately large increase when compared to other industries," said Tim Erlin, director of IT security and risk strategy for Tripwire. "At the same time, energy organizations face unique challenges in protecting industrial control systems and SCADA assets. Detecting attacks successfully is the midpoint of the overall process. Energy organizations need to invest in greater prevention and forensic tools to decrease the rate of successful attacks and fully investigate those they can't prevent."

In addition to this study, Tripwire conducted a survey of 200 security professionals attending RSA Conference 2016. When asked if a cyber attack would cause physical damage to critical infrastructure in 2016, 83 percent respondents said "yes." In addition, 73 percent said critical infrastructure providers are more vulnerable to ransomware attacks than other organizations.

For more:
- see this background article

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