DNS - Symantec Releases 2010 Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Survey

Symantec Corp., stated that more than half of the critical infrastructure providers report that their networks have experienced what they perceived as politically motivated cyber attacks. Symantec (News - Alert) released the findings in its 2010 Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Survey.

In some countries, upwards of eighty-five percent of the nation’s critical infrastructure is owned by private corporations, many of which are small businesses, states the report.

In the past five years, participants claimed to have experienced such an attack on an average of 10 times; this cost the companies about $850,000 a year. Any cyber attack on critical infrastructure providers would threaten national security as they are important, but about 53 percent of companies suspected they had experienced an attack waged with a specific political goal in mind.

“Critical infrastructure protection is not just a government issue. In countries where the majority of a nation's critical infrastructure is owned by private corporations, in addition to large enterprises, there is also the significant presence of small and medium-sized businesses," said Justin Somaini, chief information security officer at Symantec Corp. (News - Alert), in a press release. "Security alone is not enough for critical infrastructure providers of all sizes to withstand today's cyber attacks.”

To protect themselves from these attacks, most of the critical infrastructure providers have signed up for the government’s CIP program. Only one-third of critical infrastructure providers feel extremely prepared against all types of attacks and 31 percent felt less than somewhat prepared, states the report. The report proposes measures such as developing and enforcing IT policies and automating compliance processes, authenticating identities, protecting the infrastructure by securing endpoints and so on.

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