New Delhi , Jan 8 : Global cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab on Monday released a report stating the business trends of targeted attacks and threats faced by the industrial organisations.
Of the companies that participated in the 'IT Security Risks Survey', every fourth company has faced a wide variety of cyber-attacks.
28 percent of the 962 industrial companies surveyed have faced targeted attacks in the last 12 months.
Moreover, one of the fastest growing types of threat among the multitude targeting industrial organisations in 2017 was targeted attacks, according to the report.
Kaspersky Labs also stated that to make factory floors more secure in 2018, it is critical to eliminate targeted attacks from cybersecurity blind spots.
Due to a steady increase in complexity and number of attacks on the industrial market, the consequences of ignoring cybersecurity issues could now be disastrous, the report further stated.
The survey further confirms the predictions of Kaspersky ICS CERT experts about the emergence of specific malware targeting vulnerabilities in industrial automation components in 2018. The fact that the most dangerous incident type has grown by more than a third strongly suggests that cybercriminal groups are paying much closer attention to the industrial sector.
"Cyber-attacks on industrial control systems have become the indisputable number-one concern. The good news is that the majority of industrial market players know which threats are coming to the fore today and will be relevant in the near future. That's why it's crucially important to implement a complex security solution that's specifically designed to protect automated industrial environments, is highly flexible and configured in accordance with the technological processes of each organization," said the head of critical infrastructure protection business development, Kaspersky Lab, Andrey Suvorov.
Industrial organisations themselves are fully aware of the need for high-quality protection against cyber-threats.
62 percent of the employees at industrial companies firmly believe that it is necessary to use more a sophisticated IT security software.
However, according to the report, software alone is not enough. Almost half (49 percent) of industrial company respondents blame the staff for not properly following IT security policies, which is 6 percent more than respondents in other sectors.
Cybersecurity awareness training is a 'must' when it comes to cybersecurity in industrial organizations, given that any employee, from the administration side to the factory floor, plays a key role in the safety of an enterprise and maintaining operational continuity, the report concluded.
