Cyber attacks in the upstream oil and gas sector are increasing, according to Eric Knapp, the global director of cyber security solutions and technology for Honeywell Process Solutions.

At an annual meeting for Honeywell users in the EMEA region being held in Madrid this week, Knapp told Rigzone that the oil and gas industry is not only seeing more cyber threat activity, but that threats of this nature are becoming more advanced.

“In those sites that we support directly, we have seen that there’s an increase in activity. We can extrapolate from that that globally there’s an increase ... Malware creation and the cyber threat as an entity is an organization. Malware changes and evolves … we’re seeing activity increase across the board.”

Over the past 30 years, the oil and gas sector has been the target of well-known cyber attacks. One of the most famous was launched against Saudi Aramco in 2012 by the terrorist organization, Cutting Sword of Justice. The group launched the attack to stop oil and gas production in Saudi Arabia’s largest exporter within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), according to a white paper by Lockheed Martin Corporation.

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