You are probably right, the news is certainly driving a lot of it, but also these types of attacks are increasing in frequency because of the proliferation of connection points between industrial networks and the internet. There's just more industrial stuff that's out there.

It's kind of a forgotten area for security. Most security tools and policy tend to focus higher up the "real computers", for lack of a better term.

estimates vary, but I've never seen one that has more than 10,000 ICS cybersecurity specialists *worldwide*

In the U.S., the numbers are around 3000-5000.

And yet, so much relies on industrial control systems...