


“Regulators and governments will react promptly to an increase in serious incidents resulting from failure to secure CPSs, drastically increasing rules and regulations governing them,” said Katell Thielemann, research vice president at Gartner.
“In the U.S., the FBI, NSA and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have already increased the frequency and details provided around threats to critical infrastructure-related systems, most of which are owned by private industry. Soon, CEOs won’t be able to plead ignorance or retreat behind insurance policies.”
Gartner predicts that the financial impact of CPS attacks resulting in fatal casualties will reach over $50 billion by 2023.
Even without taking the actual value of a human life into the equation, the costs for organizations in terms of compensation, litigation, insurance, regulatory fines and reputation loss will be significant.
“Technology leaders need to help CEOs understand the risks that CPSs represent and the need to dedicate focus and budget to securing them,” said Ms. Thielemann. “The more connected CPSs are, the higher the likelihood of an incident occurring.”
With OT, smart buildings, smart cities, connected cars and autonomous vehicles evolving, incidents in the digital world will have a much greater effect in the physical world as risks, threats and vulnerabilities now exist in a bidirectional, cyber-physical spectrum.
However, many enterprises are not aware of CPSs already deployed in their organization, either due to legacy systems connected to enterprise networks by teams outside of IT, or because of new business-driven automation and modernization efforts.
“A focus on ORM – or operational resilience management – beyond information-centric cybersecurity is sorely needed,” Ms. Thielemann said.
Gartner clients can learn more in the report “Predicts 2020: Security and Risk Management Programs.”
Gartner Security & Risk Management Summits
Gartner analysts will provide additional analysis on IT security trends at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit 2020 taking place virtually September 14-17 in the Americas and EMEA and December 2-4 in Japan. Follow news and updates from the conferences on Twitter at #GartnerSEC.