Major Attack On Critical Systems To Happen In Two Years Warn Security Chiefs

Nearly 70% of cyber security leaders in the APAC region believe a major attack affecting critical infrastructure across multiple countries will happen in the next two years, a survey reveals. Most cyber security leaders in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region believe that a major, successful cyber attack on critical infrastructure in their country, or multiple countries, is imminent, a new survey has found, which was conducted ahead of Black Hat Asia in Singapore. IT security experts are commented below.

Dean Ferrando, Systems Engineer Manager – EMEA at Tripwire:

We have seen the devastating affects cyber attacks can have on critical infrastructures which is why it pays to make attackers lives as difficult as possible. The only way to do this is to implement security and defence tools that we already know work such as perimeter protection tools such as firewalls, network segmentation to contain any threat discovered as well as vulnerability assessment solutions. By getting the basics right, organisations that have critical systems will be making it harder and costlier for attackers to be effective with their threats. Most times, a hacker’s function is to cause as much disruption as possible, so finding and patching known vulnerabilities, making sure critical systems are securely configured and monitoring your systems for abnormal changes, can go a long way to increasing your barrier of defence, especially as the threat of an attack from nation states increases.

Tim Erlin, VP, product management and strategy at Tripwire: 

It’s clear that protecting critical infrastructure from cyberattacks needs to be on the agenda of every government. These attacks aren’t a distant possibility, but a near-term reality.

It’s easy to let fear-mongering get the best of us, and to believe that we’re doomed to suffer through successful attacks, but the data shows that strong, foundational security controls work. Governments and organizations can protect themselves much more effectively with tried-and-true cybersecurity controls. It’s not easy, but it’s nowhere near impossible.