Tripwire Survey: 77% of IT Executives Within Energy Sector Experience Increase in Cyber Attacks

A new Tripwire survey says 77 percent of information technology professionals in the energy sector saw an increase in cyber attack incidents within their organizations over the last year.

Tripwire said Thursday it commissioned market research firm Dimensional Research to poll at least 150 IT executives from companies across utilities, energy and oil and gas sectors in November 2015.

The study also found that 68 percent of the respondents said the rate of network intrusions rose by more than 20 percent over the last month.

“[D]ata shows that energy organizations are experiencing a disproportionately large increase when compared to other industries,” said Tim Erlin, director of IT security and risk strategy at Tripwire.

Erlin added that energy institutions encounter difficulties in terms of safeguarding supervisory control and data acquisition assets and industrial control systems.

Tripwire also found that more than 75 percent of respondents said network vulnerabilities at their organizations have been linked to external sources, while 22 percent said their companies lack processes to determine sensitive data.

“Energy organizations need to invest in greater prevention and forensic tools to decrease the rate of successful attacks and fully investigate those they can’t prevent,” Erlin said.