KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 20 — Global cybersecurity firm Fortinet revealed that a total of 50 organisations involved in the operational technology (OT) industry in Malaysia suffered an impact on operations due to cyber intrusion.

Fortinet Malaysia country manager Dickson Woo said the number represented 100 per cent of Malaysian OT organisations surveyed in its latest Global 2022 State of Operation Technology and Cybersecurity Report released today.

The report found that all of the OT organisations surveyed experienced at least one intrusion in the past 12 months with the top three types of intrusion experienced were phishing email, malware and insider breach.

"76 per cent of local organisations also expressed a high-level concern regarding ransomware in OT environments.

"These alarming results call for an urgent need for local organisations to relook at their cybersecurity strategies and adopt industry best practices,” he told reporters in a briefing here today.

The report also found that 59 per cent of local organisations surveyed suffered an operation outage that affected productivity and 92 per cent of Malaysian OT organisations took up to a few hours to return to service while some took up to months to recover.

Woo said Fortinet is committed to fortifying Malaysians against emerging cybersecurity threats for a resilient next generation of businesses.

"As a cybersecurity company, we are working with the government agencies to come out with some form of collaboration or strategy on what is the right thing to do in order to prevent this kind of intrusion,” he added. — Bernama