Description
Threats-to-Critical-Infrastructure (PDF Guide)
Key Findings
- For this report, critical infrastructure is broadly defined as systems and assets so vital to the United States that their loss would have a debilitating effect on national security, public health, or safety. The authors divide these assets into seven sectors: energy, transportation, financial services, communications, health care, water, and municipal services.
- Impacts resulting from critical infrastructure attacks or vulnerabilities are often intensified by interdependencies and cascading effects across sectors and geographic boundaries; therefore, singular events are not really singular and will have outsize effects.
- There is a high degree of interdependence in some sectors; the resulting difficulty in isolating the effects of an attack to a single actor or category makes attribution particularly challenging.
- Hesitancy by private organizations to share details about specific threats or threat actors often stems from concerns regarding customer confidence, legal liabilities, or proprietary technology; this hinders information-sharing efforts, planning, response, recovery, and collaboration between affected entities and other stakeholders.
- Infrastructure protection often requires a deep understanding of targeted infrastructure; highly trained individuals are needed to address these mitigations at the system level and work with other sector experts on cross-sector impacts.
- Some sectors have underinvested in much-needed enhancements to infrastructure networks, assets, systems, and facilities; this increases the likelihood of disruption and interruption of services.
- Sector authorities are often decentralized, and assets are largely privatized; resulting silos can create challenges in coordination and complicate efforts to maintain and enhance critical infrastructure.
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