Liability for cyber-physical security incidents will pierce the corporate veil to personal liability for 75% of CEOs by 2024. The financial impact of Cyber-Physical System (CPS) attacks resulting in fatalities is expected to grow higher, according to Gartner.
Gartner analysts predict “security incidents will rapidly increase in the coming years due to a lack of security focus and spending currently aligning to these assets.
The trend is only accelerated by the growing number of connected devices, systems and services.”
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The financial impact of cyber-physical security attacks could be over $50 billion in 3 years
Even without taking the actual value of human life into the equation, the costs for organizations in terms of compensation, litigation, insurance, regulatory fines and reputation loss will be significant, notes Gartner.
As a result of increasing regulatory scrutiny and oversight, Gartner says CEOs won’t be able to plead ignorance or retreat behind insurance policies.
A focus on ORM – or operational resilience management – beyond information-centric cybersecurity is sorely needed
Katell Thielemann, VP Gartner
“With Operations Technology (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.
With many enterprises not being aware of CPSs already deployed (perhaps due to legacy systems) and the number of incidents growing, there’s a greater effect in the physical world”.
“The more connected CPSs are, the higher the likelihood of an incident occurring.”
Also read: What’s New in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2020
What is a Cyber-Physical System (CPS)?
Gartner defines CPSs as systems that are engineered to orchestrate sensing, computation, control, networking and analytics to interact with the physical world (including humans).
The CPSs underpin all connected IT, operational technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) efforts where security considerations span both the cyber and physical worlds, such as asset-intensive, critical infrastructure and clinical healthcare environments.
