Critical Infrastructure is under even greater attack

David Heath
Wednesday, 20 April 2011 23:15

Business IT - Security

According to the latest survey, private sector critical infrastructure all around the world is concerned about cyber threats but not well-prepared to deal with them.

Critical infrastructure IT professionals from a variety of countries were surveyed in November last year as to their views on the likelihood of cyber attack and their preparedness to deal with such attacks.  The results make rather dismal reading.

The survey, "In the Dark: Critical Industries Confront Cyberattacks" conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and sponsored by McAfee surveyed 200 electricity executives from 14 countries (Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Spain, UAE/Dubai, United States).

Drawing a quick summary of the report, nine out of 10 Australian respondents believe their sector is not at all or not very prepared for stealthy network infiltration and 50 percent are not prepared to deal with large-scale denial of service attacks.  Further, the rate of security adoption is significantly trailing behind the rate at which threats are growing.

More seriously, the report notes, "Twenty-five percent of critical infrastructure companies do not interact with the government on cybersecurity and network defense matters."

Following on from last year's inaugural report, "In the Crossfire: Critical Infrastructure in the Age of Cyberwar," the new report concludes that "while the threat level to these infrastructures has accelerated, the response level has not, even after the majority of respondents frequently found malware designed to sabotage their systems (approximately 75 percent), and nearly half of respondents in the electric industry sector reported that they found Stuxnet on their systems."

Further highlights on the next page.