Eighteen global companies from the oil and gas community this week took a cyber resilience pledge at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022, calling for more collective preparedness against cyberattacks in the industry.

The pledge came on the heels of recent warnings from governments about the heightened threats against critical infrastructure and two major security breaches targeting the oil and gas industry in the past two years including the Colonial Pipeline attack in the United States in May 2021 and another one on European oil facilities in February 2022.

“First endorsed by key CEOs in the oil and gas value chain, the Cyber Resilience Pledge is a landmark step as it signals recognition of the complexities of building a cyber-resilient industry ecosystem and a commitment towards collective action to achieve it,” said Alexander Klimburg, head of the Centre for Cybersecurity at World Economic Forum. 

Organizations that made the pledge include Aker BP, Check Point Software Technologies, Cognite, Dragos, Ecopetrol, Galp, Global Resilience Federation, Repsol, Suncor, and more.

"The oil and gas industry is going through a digital revolution that has been a catalyst to the energy transition and sustainability,” Ecopetrol CEO Felipe Bayón said. “Cyber resilience is key in this revolution, as staying ahead of vulnerabilities is fundamental to our business. The pledge is a step further by developing a collective effort to embed cyber-resilience and a cyber-risk aware culture across the energy industry.”

Industrial cybersecurity vendor Dragos’ CEO Robert M. Lee concurred on the importance of common, industry-wide, cyber-resilience practices for the industry and the impact of this pledge. “When we're talking about cybersecurity, it's not just data and identity and credit cards. Those are important but we're also talking about human life.”

Lee noted there is a playbook associated with the pledge which was designed by community members to offer “high-level guidance for the board of directors and executives on what they should be asking and demanding.”

The World Economic Forum plans to expand this cyber resilience pledge to more industries, as they found that 87% of the surveyed senior executives plan to improve cyber resilience in their organizations, but only 13% of them integrated it into their business strategy, according to its cybersecurity center’s latest Global Cyber Outlook report.