According to a Kaspersky Lab survey of 3,900 IT professionals from around the world, security priorities for industrial and manufacturing companies differ radically from those for service companies. Industries value (or underestimate) certain types of data differently, and even within different industries, security priorities can vary significantly.
Specifically, Kaspersky Lab’s research categorized respondents into 17 sectors of activity, including – among others – manufacturing and energy & utilities. These sectors stand out from the rest in terms of the design of their information networks (they cover industrial machines managed through highly specialized industrial software), while the security priorities for these networks are completely different. The results of the research make the differences evident.
- Intellectual Property: At a rate of 21%, representatives of the manufacturing sector reported a loss of Intellectual Property in the last 12 months. This rate is the fifth highest among the participants. In this context, this sector has rated the protection of intellectual property as the most important security priority (17%). In contrast, the lowest rate of intellectual property loss was reported by companies in the energy & utilities sector. In fact, among the 17 sectors evaluated, this sector attributed the lowest importance to this priority.
- Business Intelligence: For the manufacturing sector, the importance of data related to market and competitive intelligence is just average. In contrast, the energy & utilities sector gave it the highest importance among all business sectors. However, relatively high rates of business intelligence data loss have been recorded in both sectors (24% for manufacturing and 23% for energy & utilities, the third and fourth highest rates, respectively, among the 17 sectors surveyed).
- Customer Information : Neither the manufacturing nor the energy & utilities sectors are particularly concerned about losing customer information. This is justified by the fact that both sectors reported low rates of data theft compared to other business sectors. Specifically, 32% of respondents from the manufacturing sector reported losing customer data, the third lowest rate among all sectors. The corresponding rate for the energy & utilities sector was 22%, the lowest among all.
- Internal Operations Information : In both manufacturing and energy & utilities, there is particular concern about the loss of data related to their operations (e.g., details of business processes). Almost half of the companies in these two sectors reported losing such information in the past 12 months (46% for manufacturing and 45% for energy & utilities).
The above data shows radically different approaches to security. Corporate security policies focus on data protection, while in industries they focus on process protection. The research data shows that industrial companies place a high priority on the security of internal processes and that the security of customer data is not a factor of concern for them.
However, this data also shows that one industry’s top concern may be of little importance to another (e.g. the importance placed on Intellectual Property). For example, Kaspersky Lab’s research found that 31% of manufacturing companies believe they are a target of cyberattacks. This was the second highest percentage of all sectors (behind only financial services). At the same time, the energy & utilities sector does not seem to share this concern, with the corresponding percentages being below average.
It is clear that the information networks and security priorities of industrial enterprises require a different strategy that meets their needs. Now, the need for advanced industrial security is more urgent than ever, as sophisticated malware, such as Wiper and Shamoon, targets industrial enterprises, causing millions in damage.
Additional information about the company’s approach to industrial security, as well as a whitepaper summarizing security challenges for industries, can be found in Kaspersky Lab’s Critical Infrastructure Protection & Industrial Security Business Center . Analysis of malware attacks against industrial enterprises is also available on the Kaspersky Business Blog
