South African critical infrastructure providers are positive about their capabilities to withstand an attack, according to findings in the Symantec 2011 Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) survey.
Only 17% to 36% of surveyed respondents say they were certain or suspected that their organisation had experienced an attack, and overall, 66% to 72% said their organisation was somewhat or extremely prepared to withstand an attack.
However, Jayson O'Reilly, Symantec security practice manager, says the survey finds that companies are generally less engaged in their government's CIP programmes this year when compared to last year.
“In fact, only 37% of companies are completely or significantly engaged in such programmes this year, versus 56% in 2010,” says O'Reilly.
“It should subsequently come as no surprise that overall CIP readiness on a global scale also fell an average of eight points - from 60% to 63% who said they are somewhat/extremely prepared in 2011, compared with 68% to 70% in 2010.”
Earlier this year, the Duqu virus showed it was possible to gather intelligence data and assets from organisations in industrial control environments. According to Symantec, the attackers behind Duqu were looking for information such as design documents that could help them mount future attacks on an industrial control facility.
According to the CIP survey, only 9% of South African companies have engaged with the country's critical infrastructure plans for one to two years, and 23% say their engagement has lasted more than two years.
Gordon Love, regional director of Symantec Africa, says the survey results are alarming, considering virus attacks like Nitro and Duqu that have targeted critical infrastructure providers.
“Fewer threats seem to be spurring a level of complacency among critical infrastructure providers in the country.” Love adds that resource and manpower limitations have forced critical infrastructure providers to focus on more day-to-day cyber threats.
“However, we believe that targeted attacks against critical infrastructure, such as Stuxnet, Nitro and Duqu, will continue. Businesses and governments in this region should be very aggressive in their efforts to protect critical industry cyber networks,” says Love.
According to Kaspersky Lab, Duqu was created with the aim of gathering data related to the activities of a series of Iranian companies and agencies. Kaspersky says evidence points to the fact that Duqu could have been around since 2007 and 2008, and that the Stuxnet worm was created on the basis of a platform that was also used during the creation of Duqu.
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