Germany Sees Big Rise in Security Problems Affecting Infrastructure (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on Sunday February 17, 2019 @06:04AM from the security-woes dept.

Germany has experienced a big increase in the number of security incidents hitting critical infrastructure such as power grids and water suppliers, the BSI cybersecurity agency said on Sunday, adding however that they were not all due to hacking. From a report: The Welt am Sonntag weekly had reported on Sunday that Germany had learned of 157 hacker attacks on critical infrastructure companies in the second half of 2018 compared to 145 attacks in the whole of the previous year. "The number of reports of IT security incidents has increased but it is not to be equated with the number of cyber attacks," tweeted the BSI in response to the newspaper report.

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More companies are obliged to report incidents by ffkom · 2019-02-17 11:07 · Score: 3, Informative

I think this increase in incidents may very well be caused primarily by the introduction of new laws (called "KRITIS" in Germany, based on EU-Regulation 2008/114/EG) that require companies (from an increasing number of industry sectors) to report security incidents.

In the past, the default reaction of companies to security events has always been to be silent about them and tell no one in fear of bad PR. Now, there is a legal risk involved with that strategy, so more events get reported.