Tripwire Study: Govt IT Professionals Fear Cyber Attacks on City Infrastructure Systems

A study conducted by Dimensional Research on behalf of Tripwire says 88 percent out of 200 state and local government information technology professionals interviewed believe a cyber attack on city infrastructure systems poses a threat to public safety.

Tripwire said Thursday 78 percent of respondents believe there will likely be a cyber attack against smart city services in 2016 and 83 percent worry about the possibility of hacks against transportation networks.

Three percent said there would be no incident against smart city services this year.

“As we use more and more technology to innovate around the management of cities and their infrastructure, we also create new attack surfaces that can be exploited,” said Tim Erlin, Tripwire director of IT security and risk strategy.

“Protecting public infrastructure from cyber and physical attacks is a key consideration in the evolution of smart city technologies.”