From a 23-market survey, data for specific APAC/ASEAN countries’ large industrial/operational technology firms showed five trends for 2023

In a Dec 2023 survey of 1,979 respondents in Operational Technology (OT)/IT roles in large firms* from 23 markets involving OT cyber trends, some key data for the specific Asia Pacific/ASEAN countries involved^ were disclosed to the public.

First, about 75.3% of the stated regional respondents had indicated experiencing at least one cyberattack in the 2023, with 57.5% citing monthly or weekly attacks.

Second, over 29.5% of these respondents indicated having had to shut down industrial operations in 2023 due to a successful attack. This was likely driving their organizations to focus on security for their OT environments: 61.8% considered it a high priority, and 55.3% were expecting to increase spending on OT cybersecurity in the next two years.

Other findings

Next, in respondents from ASEAN whose firms had both OT and IT teams, 36% reported a shared responsibility for OT cybersecurity purchase decisions between the two teams. Also:

  • 75.6% of respondents in the specified ASEAN markets had identified AI attacks against OT as a critical issue at the time, and 76.7% indicated their belief that AI will be key to stopping OT attacks.
  • 80.3% believed the move to cloud computing can reinforce OT security, with 55.6% also indication “it would create increased cybersecurity challenges in the next two years.”
  • 80.8% of the ASEAN-specific respondents in industrial organizations had indicated endorsing a Zero Trust approach as the right strategy, with 21.4% of this group indicating having fully implemented such solutions for their OT/IT environments.

According to Claribel Chai, Country Manager (Singapore), Palo Alto Networks, the firm disclosing its survey findings: “In this digital age where connectivity is omnipresent, traditional security measures alone are insufficient to combat sophisticated cyber threats. An AI-led approach stands at the forefront of defense… (and) close collaboration between the IT and OT teams is essential, to ensure a consolidated approach to cybersecurity.”

*More than 54.3 % of respondents were from companies with 1,000 to 5,000 personnel; the rest were organizations with more than 5,000 personnel and individual practitioners of cybersecurity at industrial organizations

^The markets of the APAC/ASEAN specified, plus their sample sizes, are: Japan (103), Singapore (101), India (103), Australia (103), New Zealand (50), Thailand (51), the Philippines (51), Indonesia (51), Malaysia (51), Vietnam (510), China (102), Hong Kong (51), Taiwan (51) and South Korea (51)