Water and Electricity Companies Suffer Severe Damage from Cyber-Attacks

More than half of cyber-attacks experienced by critical services disrupted operations or caused permanent damage.

According to research by Semperis, 57 percent of water, water treatment and electricity companies suffered disruptions, but 54 percent said the attacks caused permanent corruption or destruction of data or systems.

Also, 67 percent of attacks compromised identity systems, and 80 percent of operators were targeted multiple times.

Chris Inglis, Semperis’ strategic advisor, said: “The systems that supply our power grids and our clean drinking water are the underpinning of everything we do; and yet we go about our business, confident that somebody else is going to handle it. Somebody else isn’t going to handle it. We need to harden our systems and extract criminal elements — now.” 

Written by

Dan Raywood
Senior Editor
SC Media UK

Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with more than 20 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 16 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.

He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Conference, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and ESET Security Days.

Outside work, Dan enjoys supporting Tottenham Hotspur, managing mischievous cats, and sampling craft beers.