The article is a brief commentary on the 2026 Waterfall / ICS STRIVE OT Cyber Threat Report, with Dale Peterson arguing that the number of publicly disclosed cyber incidents causing physical consequences actually fell in 2025 rather than accelerating dramatically. His main takeaway is that these incidents remain rare, and that the 2025 total was both small and broadly in line with the levels seen from 2022 through 2024. Peterson specifically praises the report for acknowledging a 25% year-over-year decline, and he values the report’s methodology because it focuses on cyber incidents with physical impact and provides enough incident-level data for independent review.

He then pushes back against what he sees as misleading hype around percentage-based statistics. Peterson notes that the report highlighted a doubling of combined nation-state and hacktivist attacks, but he argues that the raw figures were too small to support dramatic conclusions: the combined category rose from 7 to 14 incidents, while nation-state incidents alone fell from 6 to 3 and hacktivist incidents rose from 1 to 11. He also points out that a heavily cited 2024 statistic about a 146% rise in affected sites was driven by just three unusually large incidents and was omitted from the newer report, which he considers a sensible choice. Finally, he says the overall drop in 2025 was largely explained by fewer ransomware-related operational disruptions, which fell to 23 of 57 incidents from 45 in 2024, while also acknowledging that the public data likely represents only part of the true picture because many incidents are never disclosed.

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Source: https://dale-peterson.com/2026/03/31/number-of-cyber-incidents-with-a-physical-impact-down-in-2025/