INTRODUCTION

For any nation, attacks on critical national infrastructure pose an all-to real, deeply disturbing cyber security threat. When critical national infrastructure experiences disruptions, national economies can collapse, lives are acutely affected, and our social fabric is degraded.

Attacks on critical infrastructure systems have the potential to impact access to drinking water, availability of energy, transportation modalities, financial accounts, healthcare, fire brigade availability, and other essential services that affect the quality of everyday life for hundreds of millions of people. To convey the gravity and gruesomeness of infrastructure attacks,
infrastructure attack consequences include extreme physical duress and loss of life.

Cyber attackers frequently plan and execute compromises against critical infrastructure and control systems, although the vast majority of them are stopped and the issues solved. These attackers generally intend to curry political favor, gain financial advantages or simply wish to engender destruction.

In 2021, nearly 90% of US-based critical infrastructure entities experienced attempted ransomware attacks, according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). “It’s a dismal and harrowing reality,” wrote Fortune Magazine.¹

Many existing infrastructure security systems lack the capacity and capabilities to effectively control for attacks in our current hyper-connected and demanding infrastructure ecosystems. Industrial control systems, such as SCADA, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) and Distributed Control Systems pose some of the greatest unprecedented risk.

The way in which we approach national cyber security strategy development and resilience planning must change. Organizations need to evolve their technology management best practices, work across government agencies and private groups, and implement stronger risk management solutions in order to safeguard critical national infrastructure systems.

Click here for to download the eBook.