In 2018, global cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab detected and prevented activity by malicious objects on almost half of industrial control system (ICS) computers protected by the company’s products and defined as part of an organization’s industrial infrastructure. The most affected countries were Vietnam, Algeria and Tunisia. These are some of the main findings of the Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT report on the industrial threat landscape in H2 2018.
Malicious cyber activities on ICS computers are an extremely dangerous threat as they could potentially cause material losses in the operation of industrial facilities.
In 2018, the share of ICS computers that experienced such activities grew to 47.2 percent from 44 percent in 2017, indicating that the threat is rising.
According to the new report, the top three countries in terms of the percentage of ICS computers on which Kaspersky Lab prevented malicious activity were the following: Vietnam (70.09 percent), Algeria (69.91 percent) and Tunisia (64.57 percent). The least affected nations were Ireland (11.7 percent), Switzerland (14.9 percent), and Denmark (15.2 percent).
“The main source of threat to industrial computers is not a targeted attack, but mass-distributed malware that gets into industrial systems by accident, over the internet, through removable media such as USB sticks or emails. However, the fact that the attacks are successful because of a casual attitude to cybersecurity hygiene among employees means that they can potentially be prevented by staff training and awareness — this is much easier than trying to stop determined threat actors,” said Kirill Kruglov, security researcher at Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT.
