Oil company IT systems under doubled threat

Geographical distances and growing reliance on technology increase vulnerability

Cyber attacks on oil and gas company systems have more than doubled since 2000, according to defence company Thales.

Alongside rising global terrorism and growing reliance on IT systems in the management of oil and gas extraction, external attacks have increased from 31 per cent before 2000 to 70 per cent in the past five years, says a white paper published last week.

Energy installations are particularly vulnerable to both physical and electronic attack because of the distances involved and because they are often located in remote or politically unstable parts of the world.

The amount of information involved is vast: a major oil company handles about four million daily transactions, increasing corporate data storage requirements by 1TB a day.

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