Wednesday, 12 November 2008

Eight Major Industries Vulnerable to Cyber Attack, Says Secure Computing

Secure Computing, an enterprise gateway security company, has published the results of a study conducted during August and September 2008 in the US, Canada and Europe.

The study surveyed 199 international security experts and other industry insiders from utilities, oil and gas, financial services, government, telecommunications, transportation and other critical infrastructure industries.

Despite a growing body of legislation and regulation, more than half of these experts believed that most critical infrastructure continues to be vulnerable to cyber attack. More than 50 percent of respondents believed that utilities, oil and gas, transportation, telecommunications, chemical, emergency services and postal/shipping industries were not prepared. For some sectors, such as postal/shipping and transportation, as many as three out of four experts indicated that the infrastructure was not ready for attack. Only the financial services industry was considered prepared, although nearly 40 percent believed that even this sector was not ready to defend itself.

When asked to name the biggest bottleneck to improving cyber security, the largest number of experts (29 percent) pointed to the cost of security measures. Apathy was the second most likely to be selected as the primary bottleneck, with government bureaucracy and internal issues tying for third.