Cyberattacks against critical infrastructure a constant occurrence

A new survey involving some 600 technology executives of critical infrastructure systems around the world has revealed that these sites are under constant attack. What's more, the IT professionals believe that these attacks are not isolated incidents from script kiddies or even black hat hackers either, but sophisticated cyberattacks that originate from foreign government.

The survey was commissioned by security vendor McAfee and involved the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Critical installations could be electrical grids, telecommunications networks, water and sewage plants or operational control systems such as SCADA in the U.S. (supervisory control and data acquisition). 

What proved to be interesting in this study was the naming of the United States as the biggest threat (36 percent), with China coming in a close second (33 percent). 100 of the survey's respondents were based in the United States, with 50 respondents each from countries such as Japan, China, Germany and France.

Casting the study into the spotlight were recent revelations by search giant Google and other companies of sophisticated and coordinated attempts to penetrate their corporate networks. Once the domain of movie flicks, the increasing use of information technology in infrastructure is opening up a window of vulnerability into critical installations. And what's the scariest part of the current situation? Well, only 57 percent of respondents will say that their organization updates and patches their software on a regular basis.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Network World
- check out this article at Wired 

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