Half of computers of industrial enterprises of the Russian Federation in 2018 were subjected to hacker attacks

According to Kaspersky Lab, about half of the computers in the Russian industry ran into cyber threats in 2018, as reported by Vedomosti. The reason is the growing interest of cybercriminals to industrial enterprises, as well as not too high activity of the enterprises themselves in terms of protecting their systems.

Cybercriminals, in the opinion of Laboratories experts, were simply forced to pay attention to the industry, as banks and financial institutions constantly strengthened their protection systems. Thus, the level of income of burglars is falling, and risks are increasing.

In percentage terms, about 48% of industrial computers were attacked. First of all, these are automated process control systems. For about a third of the systems, the source of threats was the Internet, 5% were attacked through removable media, and 2% through email programs of various kinds.

The improvement of modern IT technologies in enterprises, experts say, on the one hand, increases the efficiency of industry, on the other - increases the vulnerability of industrial systems. At the same time, most hackers do not intend to damage the work of the company. The main task of criminals - theft of money.
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According to third-party companies, domestic automated process control systems were initially created without relying on external interference, thus, the protective mechanisms of such systems are not too good.

Experts believe that now the attacks are carried out not only by attackers, for whom profit is important. Actively and those who have other interests. For example, production can be attacked in such a way that a problem arises with industrial systems, and another company will receive orders or tender. To realize this, you can disable the gas turbine, water filtration systems, or turn off the power supply at the aluminum plant and then freeze aluminum in the electrolysis baths.

According to Positive Technologies, the majority of Russian companies operating in the industrial sector spend about 50 million rubles on cybersecurity. per year (on average per company). At the same time, losses due to daily downtime are estimated by many people with large sums - so if an attacker spends a cyber attack on the infrastructure, and it is successful, then the company can lose tens of millions of rubles in just a few days. One third of industrial organizations estimated their possible damage from the refusal of corporate infrastructure in just one day at 0.5–2 million rubles, 13% from 2 million to 10 million, 17% from 10 million to 50 million.

The most common cause of incidents, according to experts, is unintentional unqualified personnel actions. The second is a hacker who wants to make money. Over time, the trend is becoming increasingly apparent when cybercriminals are trying to damage the economy of the country in which industrial enterprises are located.