Every third ICS computer under attack was in manufacturing companies

In the first half of the year manufacturing companies were most susceptible: ICS computers of them accounted for about one third of all attacks, according to the Kaspersky Lab report “Threat Landscape for Industrial Automation Systems in H1 2017.The peak of attackers’ activity was registered in March, after which the proportion of computers attacked gradually declined from April to June.

During the first six month of the year, Kaspersky Lab products blocked attack attempts on 37.6 per cent of several tens of thousands of ICS computers protected of them globally. This figure was almost unchanged compared to the previous period – it is 1.6 percentage points less than in the second half of 2016. Majority of them were in manufacturing companies that produce various materials, equipment and goods. Other most affected industries include engineering, education, food&beverage. ICS computers of energy companies accounted for almost 5 per cent of all attacks.

While the Top three countries with attacked industrial computers remained the same with Vietnam (71 per cent), Algeria (67,1 per cent) and Morocco (65,4 per cent), researchers detected an increase in number of attacks in China (57,1 per cent), which came fifth, according to the data released by Kaspersky Lab.

In total, in the first six months of 2017 Kaspersky Lab detected about 18.000 different modifications of malware on industrial automation systems belonging to more than 2.500 different families.