by Jim Preen
Cyber-crime is rarely out of the news these days. Sony says that hackers may have stolen personal data belonging to as many as 77 million PlayStation gamers. The company admitted that credit card information, used to purchase games, films and music, may be part of the haul.
Just prior to that story breaking, computer security firm McAfee released a report called ‘In the dark: Crucial Industries Confront Cyberattacks’ which casts a beady eye at the impacts of cyber-attacks on power grids, oil, gas, water and the like.
The survey of 200 IT security executives working for utility companies finds that 40 percent believe their industry’s vulnerability has increased. Around 3 out of 10 believe their company is not prepared for a cyberattack and nearly half expect a major cyber-attack within the next year.
Denial of service attack
Buried deeper in the report; 80 percent of respondents say they have faced a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), and a quarter report daily or weekly DDoS attacks.
These types of attacks have the potential to compromise websites and email traffic, but researchers say they are unlikely to disrupt energy supplies.
However, one of the report’s authors, Stewart Baker a former US national security advisor, warned power companies not to be complacent. “We asked what the likelihood was of a major attack that causes significant outage. That is one that causes severe loss of services for at least 24 hours, loss of life or personal injury or failure of a company. Three quarters thought it would happen within the next two years," he said.
By now cynics will be muttering that this is no more than a marketing exercise on the part of McAfee, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation and one of the world's largest security technology companies. To put it crudely: McAfee has come up with a worrying report that should frighten us into buying their products. But are the cynics right?
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