Sometimes the cyber defense is worse than the risk of a cyberattack

Every company is going to experience a cyberattack; what's hard to know is how to prepare and how to respond. Protecting an industrial process is a lot more complicated than downloading the latest anti-virus software, and most executives do not know where to begin. More than half of electric utility executives surveyed by the Ponemon Institute, which studies cybersecurity, said they expect a cyberattack on a significant piece of infrastructure in the next 12 months. Only 42 percent said their defenses were high. They listed their problems as lack of skilled workers, fragmented control systems and slow detection of system breaches. Only 31 percent said they were prepared to respond to an attack.