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Attackers have shifted from watching your operations, to preparing to shut them down
For years, adversaries mapped energy, water, and pipeline systems and waited. Last year, that changed and accelerated: nation-state and ransomware actors moved from reconnaissance toward operational impact across critical infrastructure. Most security providers cover IT or OT: Kudelski Security covers both.
Utilities run large fleets of SCADA systems, RTUs, and PLCs that were designed to be isolated, but now connect to corporate IT, cloud analytics, and remote-access pathways. Much of that installed base has a 20- to 40-year lifecycle, cannot be patched without an outage window, and cannot run endpoint agents.
Because OT prioritizes safety and availability over confidentiality, any control that risks a trip or outage is often rejected outright. The result is a converged attack surface defended under constraints that IT security tools were never built to respect.
Generation, treatment, transmission, distribution, and metering assets span thousands of remote and often unstaffed sites, each reached through remote-access gateways that attackers repeatedly exploit for initial access.
In electricity, distributed energy resources: solar, wind, storage, and EV charging, add tens of thousands of third party-managed endpoints; in water and gas, remote pump, valve, and pressure controllers do the same. Smart metering pushes the device population into the millions. A single supplier compromise can reach across the entire estate.
A successful intrusion - in IT or OT - can force a precautionary shutdown or directly disrupt the delivery of power, water, or fuel. Colonial Pipeline shut down roughly 5,500 miles of refined-fuel pipeline as a precaution after ransomware hit its business systems, triggering regional shortages: the operational impact came without the attackers ever touching the control network. In December 2025, wiper malware severed loss-of-view and control between roughly 30 grid-connected sites and their operators (CISA, 2026).
Because these are lifeline services, an outage rarely stays contained; it cascades outward within hours.
Downtime, ransom, recovery, and penalties compound quickly. Halliburton disclosed roughly $35 million in losses from an August 2024 ransomware attack, and American Water, the largest regulated U.S. water utility, suspended billing and customer systems after an October 2024 attack; both disclosed under SEC disclosures.
Ransomware operators increasingly steal data, in addition to encrypting it, adding double extortion pressure on top of restoration costs. Even a short interruption can trigger a material, disclosable loss.
Energy disruption can propagate into water, healthcare, finance, and telecommunications, the sectors that depend on power to function. In January 2024, malware manipulating ICS controllers cut heating to roughly 600 apartment buildings in Lviv for about 48 hours in winter (Dragos, 2024).
Attacks on utilities therefore carry public-safety consequences that most industries never face, drawing government scrutiny and reputational damage well beyond the balance sheet.
Energy and utilities face some of the most demanding cyber mandates of any critical infrastructure sector, and the bar keeps rising. NERC CIP violations carry penalties per day, per violation, for electricity operators; water systems face EPA and AWIA duties; pipelines answer to TSA directives.
CIRCIA will require 72-hour incident and 24-hour ransom payment reporting to CISA. In the EU, NIS2 raises reporting duties for essential entities.
Utilities operating across the US and EU face overlapping mandatory obligations with hard deadlines and material penalties, converging at the same time.
Most security providers extend IT tooling into OT as an afterthought. Kudelski Security covers both natively, from its 24/7 Cyber Fusion Centers, correlating IT and OT telemetry in a single detection model rather than running two disconnected practices. Our platform integrates the leading cyber-physical security technologies, so your existing OT investments feed our detection instead of being replaced. Detections are triaged by analysts who understand industrial ecosystems and process constraints, including when not to isolate a system.
When a control system goes down, response time is measured against lost service. Our 24/7 Cyber Incident Response Retainer provides guaranteed response capacity from the moment an incident is declared, with analysts already familiar with your environment. Every engagement runs with a named team that builds working knowledge of your sites, your process constraints, and your regulatory constraints.
Kudelski Security has been recognized seven consecutive times as a Representative Vendor in Gartner's Market Guide for DFIR Retainer Services (2019–2026).
Security spending in energy competes with grid modernization and reliability investment, so the business case has to hold. A Forrester Total Economic Impact study of Kudelski Security's MDR service documented a 249% ROI and 68% faster detection and response, with breakeven in under six months.
Secure your OT, safeguard service delivery, and stay ahead of nation-state and ransomware threats with Kudelski Security's tailored solutions.
