80 percent of operators were targeted multiple times.
More than half of cyber-attacks experienced by critical services disrupted operations or caused permanent damage.
According to research by Semperis, 57 percent of water, water treatment and electricity companies suffered disruptions, but 54 percent said the attacks caused permanent corruption or destruction of data or systems.
Also, 67 percent of attacks compromised identity systems, and 80 percent of operators were targeted multiple times.
Chris Inglis, Semperis’ strategic advisor, said: “The systems that supply our power grids and our clean drinking water are the underpinning of everything we do; and yet we go about our business, confident that somebody else is going to handle it. Somebody else isn't going to handle it. We need to harden our systems and extract criminal elements — now.”
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
