Utilities’ security strategies must encompass not only run-the-business IT but operating environments that are becoming ever more networked and therefore vulnerable. Yet some of the more financially successful utilities manage to excel at cybersecurity. Discover how.
We surveyed 76 CISOs and 76 CROs of utilities firms in North America, Europe and the United Kingdom (UK). We found a subset of utilities who were more financially successful than the rest—we call them Pacesetters—and compared them against the less successful firms to see if revenue and profit growth correlate with any particular cyber risk and security approaches.
The utilities industry is more amenable to doing business on cloud platforms than many other industries we’ve studied. And the more financially successful a utility is, the more likely it embraces the cloud. It’s one way of diversifying the risks with on-premises infrastructure.
A majority of utilities CISOs say they’re using the latest, best cyber technology to combat the most sophisticated threats successfully. But given how much of the power-generating and distribution ecosystem is at best only loosely secured, is the industry overconfident?
The more financially successful a utility is, the more likely its CISO and CRO confer and coordinate several times a week and even daily.
Positioned between the expectations of government regulators, investors and customers, utilities also have to balance the need for continuous production along with securing their operating and information technology. To help them walk that tightrope, we have provided some recommendations for utilities, based on TCS’ real-world experience and expertise.
The TCS Risk & Cybersecurity Study surveyed over 600 chief information security and risk officers in North America, Europe and the UK to learn what cyber challenges companies face today and how prepared they are for next-gen attacks.
TCS Thought Leadership Institute conducted this study of more than 600 CISOs and CROs early in 2022 amid an unprecedented upsurge in increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks from criminals, sovereign states, and other bad actors exploiting global socio-political and economic tensions. The survey respondents were drawn from North American, European, and UK-headquartered companies in four industries facing an unprecedented onslaught of cyber threats and increased risks, whether to business data, customer data, their operations, trade secrets, or their supply chains: banking and financial services, manufacturing, utilities, and media and information services.
