Companies pay on it

A new study from Trend Micro finds that 90 percent of German companies in the power, oil and gas, and manufacturing sectors have been affected by cyberattacks in the past 12 months. Forty-eight percent of the German companies surveyed say they always or usually respond to an attack that has occurred by making improvements to their cybersecurity infrastructure. Nevertheless, not all companies still have sufficient resources or knowledge to protect themselves against future threats. 52 percent therefore respond only sometimes or hardly at all.

For German companies whose OT (operational technology) and industrial control systems were affected by cyber attacks, the average financial damage amounts to around 2.9 million euros, according to their own figures. Compared with Japan (2.1 million euros) and the United States (2.6 million euros), the loss amount in Germany is thus the highest. The oil and gas industry suffered the greatest loss. At 90 percent of German companies, the supply chain was affected in addition to core operations, so that they had to temporarily reduce deliveries or change their supply planning.

Three quarters (75 percent) of German respondents said they had even been affected by cyberattacks on their industrial environments at least six times in the course of a year. The integration of cloud computing, edge computing and 5G into mixed IT and OT environments has fundamentally changed industrial systems and processes. Enterprises should stay ahead of this evolution and proactively implement security measures to protect their business assets. Improving risk and threat visibility is an important first step in securing the private network and industrial cloud.