Energy Sector IT Professionals Agree That Cyber Attack Could Cause Physical Damage

A recent Tripwire survey revealed that 82 percent of surveyed IT professionals in the energy, utilities, and oil and gas industries agree that a cyber attack on operational technology (OT) in their organization could cause physical damage.
According to an article on eSecurity Planet:

The survey, conducted in November 2015 by Dimensional Research, also found that almost 60 percent of respondents said they aren’t able to track all the threats targeting their OT networks, either because they don’t have the visibility necessary to track all threats (16.2 percent), because they only track threats that directly target their department (8.1 percent) or because there are just too many threats (35.4 percent).
“After hundreds of years protecting our nation’s geographic borders, it is sobering to note that possibly the most vulnerable frontier happens to be the infrastructure that runs the largest companies in the country,” Rekha Shenoy, vice president and general manager of industrial IT cyber security for Tripwire parent company Belden, said in a statement.
Seventy-six percent of respondents said their organization is a likely target for a cyber attack that would cause physical damage, and 78 percent said their organization is a potential target for a nation-state cyber attack.