Latin America: 45% faced operational cyberattacks

A survey cited by TI Inside found that 45% of companies in Latin America suffered at least one cyberattack affecting cyber-physical systems or operational environments in the past 12 months. The figure adds to a stream of recent reports on the region, which point to pressure on critical infrastructure, broader digital surveillance, and more incidents tied to operating systems.

What do the latest data show about operational systems?

The report cited by TI Inside says 45% of companies in Latin America recorded at least one attack with an impact on CPS or operational environments over the past year. In parallel, coverage from Mexico Business News reported that Claroty found 58% of cyber-physical system operators suffered a cyberattack with operational impact during the same period, although that result is global and does not by itself confirm the regional figure.

Industrial Cyber expanded on that same study with more data. Operational downtime linked to incidents averaged three days, 43% reported operational disruption, 40% reported physical security incidents or risks, and 35% reported financial losses. In addition, 75% reported at least one incident with operational impact linked to third-party access, and 49% said they had partial or no monitoring of third-party connections.

What case was used to illustrate the risk to critical infrastructure?

A column published by BioBioChile used the February 2025 transmission system failure in Chile as an example. The outage left most of the country without power for hours and also affected telecommunications, payment systems, and transportation. The piece used that episode to warn about the potential reach of a targeted attack on critical infrastructure.

In that context, the article did not describe an attack itself, but it did show how an interruption in a central component can spread across multiple services at the same time. The reference serves as a signal of the kind of impact an intrusion on energy, connectivity, or transportation could generate.

What other regional signals appear in the picture?

El País América Futura said that digital surveillance and control are expanding in Latin America, and cited a Derechos Digitales report that records more than a hundred cybersecurity violations in a year, though not limited to critical infrastructure. That note adds a different layer, tied more to digital exposure and the use of control tools than to a single operational incident.

Akamai also reported the detection and investigation of a multistage intrusion affecting supply chain infrastructure in Latin America. The company presented its segmentation, exposure analysis, and response capabilities as containment mechanisms, but the available excerpt does not identify the critical sector or allow a determination that the case directly affected an energy, water, telecommunications, or transportation installation.