Despite the data breach headlines, it turns out that the energy and utilities sector is performing lower than the retail vertical. Over the past year, BitSight researchers noted a dip in the performance of energy and utility companies, which have an average rating of 652 in the third annual BitSight Insights Industry Benchmark report. The ratings range from 250 to 900, with higher ratings equating to higher security performance based on observed security events and configurations, such as botnet communication, malware distribution and email server configuration. Energy and utilities have a higher rating than the healthcare sector, which averages 634, but come in below the news-magnet retail sector, which averages 684.
