Study: Most Critical Infrastructure Firms Have Been Breached

Uptime still trumps proactive cyber security measures in most critical infrastructure organizations worldwide, a new Ponemon Institute study shows.

Though 60% of global IT and IT security executives at critical infrastructure organizations say minimizing downtime is a top security objective, just 32% say improving their security posture is a priority. On top of that, 67% say they suffered at least one security breach in the past 12 months that resulted in confidential data loss or disruption to operations. Nearly one-fourth of those attacks were due to insiders or privileged IT users being negligent, the respondents said.

"Security as a priority… that didn't make the top five list," says Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. "Availability and uptime" are top priorities.

Preventing and quickly detecting advanced persistent threats (APTs) was a priority for 55% of companies, followed by preventing cyber attacks (44%), compliance (40%), securing the national critical infrastructure (35%), and then, with 32%, improving the organization's security posture.

The perspective of prioritizing availability over improving security is "short-sighted," says Dave Frymier, CISO at Unisys, which commissioned the study. "If you have a cyber security event, it's probably going to affect the availability of your service."

Meanwhile, critical infrastructure firms remain conflicted about patching their software with security or other updates. Fifty-four percent say their organization can't upgrade legacy systems to more secure systems cost-effectively without "sacrificing mission-critical security," the report says.

The full report, "Critical Infrastructure: Security Preparedness and Maturity," is available here for download.