By 2025, 30% of critical infrastructure organizations will experience a security breach that will result in the halting of an operations system or mission-critical cyber-physical system, according to Gartner.
Critical infrastructure security has become a primary concern for governments around the world, with the US, UK, EU, Canada and Australia each identifying sectors deemed ‘critical infrastructure’, for example, communications, transport, energy, water, healthcare and public facilities.
In some countries, critical infrastructure is state-owned, while in others, like the US, private industry owns and operates a much larger portion of it.
“Governments in many countries are now realizing their national critical infrastructure has been an undeclared battlefield for decades,” said Ruggero Contu, Research Director at Gartner. “They are now making moves to mandate more security controls for the systems that underpin these assets.”
A Gartner survey showed that 38% of respondents expected to increase spending on operational technology (OT) security by between 5% and 10% in 2021, with another 8% of respondents predicting an increase of above 10%.
However, this may not be enough to counter underinvestment in this area over many years, according to Gartner.
“Besides the need to catch up, there is a growing number of increasingly sophisticated threats,” Contu said. “Owners and operators of critical infrastructure are also struggling to prepare for the coming increased oversight.”
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