Many of you know about the Cisco Secure Ops Solution that was announced in 2014, and that it has already been adopted by Shell to secure the company's critical infrastructure, but may not have seen a demonstration or talked with a Cisco subject matter expert about it.

Well, here's your chance. We have arranged for a booth in the industrial vertical area at the World of Solutions at Cisco Live in San Diego to show just that. We're pleased to be accompanied by one of Cisco's security partners to show new features and functionality that takes Secure Ops even deeper into the cybersecurity protection and surveillance arenas.

The Cybersecurity space is getting more and more alarming every day. As my colleague Peter Granger notes, we have gone from the quaint world of Sherlock Holmes...

Sherlock Holmes:I didn't really ask, Dr. Franklyn, but what exactly do you do here?

Dr. Franklyn:Oh, Mr. Holmes, I'd love to tell you. But then of course, I'd have to kill you.

Sherlock Holmes:That would be tremendously ambitious of you.

...past the pseudo-high-tech world of James bond and closer to a more modern world reminiscent of Kiefer Sutherland's character Jack Bauer in the TV series '24'. Today's Cyber attacks are not just disgruntled employees or simple mischief makers (although that's bad enough), but can be carried out by powerful crime syndicates and hostile governments.

Now more and more attacks are becoming visible and reported (e.g. Stuxnet like 'Havex' malware strikes European SCADA Systems -June 2014) and whether they are a terrorist attack such as the data destruction attacks on Saudi Aramco and on Qatar's RasGas gas company in 2012 or unintentional (the vast majority of reported cyber incidents are 'accidental in nature' as reported by the Repository of Industrial security incidents, 2011), billions of dollars are lost every year because of them. Night Dragon, Shamoon, Flame, and Duqu have joined Stuxnet in the past few years and more will come.

A study by Fox-IT reported that 60 percent of oil and gas companies do not have a cybersecurity incident response plan. In addition, only 11 percent are fully confident that they can address a cybersecurity breach appropriately. Twenty-three percent admitted that they are not actively monitoring their network for potential intrusions.

How can Cisco help your energy organization?You can find out more by visiting our cisco.com website, and check out the Security for Industrial Networks Overview/White Paper (don't worry, it's less than 3 pages!).

And, of course, you can also visit us Cisco Live: there you'll see how the Cisco Secure Ops Solution is relevant to many industries and is helping tackle our customers' security challenges. A combination of technology, software and services expertise, Secure Ops Solution can help you increase your security response levels significantly -before, during and after an attack, across the entire attack continuum.

Don't forget our other presence there around the Collaborative Operations Solution, which my colleague Suresh Venkat talks about here: What does a Cisco Live Demonstration have to do with droughts, floods and fossil fuels?

We look forward to seeing you in the Process Manufacturing Secure Industrial Networks booth at the World of Solutions next week.

As always -comments are always appreciated and we respond to questions!