IT Says SCADA Will Continue to Be a Frequent Threat

In a recent study Raytheon and Ponemon Institute interviewed over 1,100 senior IT professionals across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East/North Africa, asking them to rate which cyber threats will increase in frequency today and in the next 3 years.

DDos attacks, or denial of service, are a type of cyber threat that targets a network and overwhelms it with so many requests that the normal traffic is disrupted by being slowed or completely stopped. Many types of cyber attacks target databases, DDoS viruses attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in the network itself. Six in ten professionals said that DDoS blitzes will increase in frequency in the present, while about seven in ten expect those types of cyberattacks to ramp up in the near future.

SCADA, supervisory control and data acquisition, is a process of control systems that touch every industry from manufacturing to communications. When these systems are under attack the tools underpinning these supervisory mechanisms-- the pumps, switches, and motors-- are manipulated to break in specific ways, such as running faster than normal and turning on and off. The most notable example of this type of assault happened in 2010 when Iran's nuclear machinery was hit with this worm.

IT professionals in the study said that SCADA, nation-state, and cyber extortion threats are projected to grow in frequency when compared to current frequency levels. While about four in ten IT professionals point to SCADA as a frequent issue now, that number jumps up to 54 percent for the frequency professionals expect to see in the future.