Survey: 66 Percent of Energy IT Professionals Say They Can Detect Data Breach on Mission Critical Systems Within One Week or Less

Tripwire, Inc., a leading global provider of advanced threat, security and compliance solutions, today announced the results of a survey of 104 attendees at the EnergySec 10th Anniversary Security Summit in Austin, Texas from August 18-22, 2014.

Industry research shows most breaches go undiscovered for weeks, months or even longer. Despite this evidence, 23 percent of respondents said their organization could detect a data breach on critical systems in 24 to 48 hours, while 24 percent said it would take three days, and 19 percent said within a week. 66 percent of respondents were confident that they could detect a data breach on critical systems within a week, 10 percent said it would take a month, nine percent said it would take three months and fifteen percent said they were not confident the could detect a breach.

“The survey results reflect a surprising optimism,” said Steven Parker, president of EnergySec, a non-profit organization formed to support organizations within the energy sector in securing their critical technology infrastructures. “Attack detection is a critical capability, and I think there is much more work to be done in this area than most organizations realize.”

According to the Mandiant 2014 M-Trends® 2014: Beyond the Breach threat report, the average time required to detect breaches is 229 days. The report also states that the number of firms that detected their own breaches dropped from 37 percent in 2012 to 33 percent in 2013.

“I always say that trust is not a control, and hope is not a strategy,” said Dwayne Melancon, chief technology officer for Tripwire. “Unfortunately, this data suggests that a lot of energy security professionals are far too hopeful about their own cybersecurity capabilities.”

For more information about Tripwire energy and utility cybersecurity solutions, please visit: http://www.tripwire.com/it-industry/energy-and-utilities-security/.

About Tripwire

Tripwire is a leading provider of advanced threat, security and compliance solutions that enable enterprises, service providers and government agencies to confidently detect, prevent and respond to cybersecurity threats. Tripwire solutions are based on high-fidelity asset visibility and deep endpoint intelligence combined with business-context and enable security automation through enterprise integration. Tripwire’s portfolio of enterprise-class security solutions includes configuration and policy management, file integrity monitoring, vulnerability management and log intelligence.  Learn more at www.tripwire.com, get security news, trends and insights at http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/ or follow us on Twitter @TripwireInc.