Study reveals the impact of threats to ICS/OT environments after Industrial locations around the world shift to digital technologies in order to foster sustainable growth. 

The move has created a flood of threats that they are not equipped to address, which can lead to reputational and financial damage.

William Malik, vice president of infrastructure of strategies at Trend Micro says this has invited a deluge of threats which they are ill-equipped to mitigate, causing major financial and reputational damage.

“Managing these heavily networked IT and OT environments effectively requires an experienced partner with the foresight and breadth of capabilities needed to deliver best-in-class protection across both environments.” said Malik

Approximatly half of the companies in the industrial sector that were affected by CNI attacks tried to improve their cybersecurity infrastructures, but did not have enough resources or knowledge to protect themselves against future threats.

Trend Micro’s research finds of the responding organisations that suffered cyber disruption to their operational technology and industrial control systems (OT/ICS), the average financial damages amount to approximately $2.8 million, with the oil & gas industry suffering the most.

These findings have come one year after the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attacks. This attack took OT systems offline for several weeks, leading to fuel shortages across the US East Coast. It remains the most severe attack on critical infrastructure (CNI).

Mick McCluney, technical director at Trend Micro says Across the globe, industrial locations are going digital to drive sustainable growth, but this has invited a deluge of threats which they are ill-equipped to mitigate, causing major financial and reputational damage.

“Managing these heavily networked IT and OT environments effectively requires an experienced partner with the foresight and breadth of capabilities needed to deliver best-in-class protection across both environments,” he says.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of respondents said they had experienced cyber disruptions to their ICS/OT environments at a minimum of six times in the past year.

Research also found

• 40% of respondents could not block the initial attack
  
• 48% of those who say there have been some disruptions do not always make improvements to minimise future cyber risks.
  
• Future investments in cloud systems (28%) and private 5G deployments (26%) were the top two drivers of cybersecurity among respondents.
  
• The OT security function tends to be less mature than IT on average in terms of risk-based security.

Trend Micro’s unified cybersecurity platform allows for streamlined detection and response that is adaptive to ICS or 5G to help organisations in complex industrial environments where multiple technologies and applications are interconnected to support business operations.

Industrial operations and systems have been transformed by the addition of cloud, edge and 5G to mixed IT and OT environments.

In 2022 and beyond organisations need to stay ahead of the curve. A secure industrial cloud or private network can only be achieved by improving risk and threat awareness.