Industrialised security threat a major concern

Security vendors are highlighting the threat that cyber criminals pose to industrialised systems with the battle against threats increasingly being played out on the factory floor.

The growth in IoT and digital transformation projects that have linked up various parts of a business have enlarged the targets that attackers can aim for and led to a growth in issues in the industralised sector, according to several in the security sector.

Kaspersky Lab has carried out some research asking customers how things have been recently and just shy of half those quizzed revealed they had insufficient insights into threats facing the business and 87% reported that the sort of problems they are facing are complex and it can take weeks to detect an event has happened.

Awareness is not so much of a problem but training seems to be an area that many customers want to improve to get more staff in a position to fend off threats,

“Cyberattacks 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," said Andrey Suvorov, head of critical infrastructure protection business development, Kaspersky Lab.

"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 organisation,” he added.

Other security experts are also keen to recommend that more customers take steps to deal with an evolving situation that is only going to become worse throughout the course of this year.

"Cyber threats to businesses are only going to continue to increase. As new technologies continue to evolve, such as the Internet of Things, so does the increased attack surface. Cybercriminals continue to focus on causing as much disruption as possible, it is likely that we will start seeing regular attacks on specific verticals, with the IoT in industrial centres, transport centres and public services increasingly becoming subject to targeted attacks," said Rob Bolton, director of Western Europe, Infoblox.

"With this in mind, 2018 needs to be the year that organisations move from defensive strategies to offensive; from detection to prevention. Technologies like machine learning can help identify potential risks and threats, and make it easier for organisations to spot any unusual activity on their networks as soon as it appears. Approaches like this can help ensure that organizations become as agile and as fast as the cybercriminals we are fighting against," he added.