Protecting Critical Infrastructure

摘要

Critical infrastructure, the services and utilities essential to the well-being, proper functioning and cohesion of a society or nation state, need protecting. Whether facility, network, service or system, CI includes public and private organisations involved in critical sectors such as energy, food and water supply, transportation (rail, road, air, sea) medical services, telecommunications, finance, and more. There's also acceptance that democratic nations' electoral systems and processes also fall under the CI banner and are equally threatened by hostile state actors. Such interference has been proven in recent years with Russian cyber-attacks at both state and fed- eral, electoral-system levels in the US, as well as in European states, including Spain and the Netherlands. Interference in the UK's Brexit Referendum remains a matter of debate, but the bottom line is that it is happening. This article takes a look at attacks on Ukraine's CI, underlining the threat, how cyberattacks have played a major role, and looks at some of the ways in which nations, public and private organisations, as well as other corporate entities involved in the running of CI, can protect against such attacks. Russia's physical attacks on CI began in the early stages of the war following the invasion; its forces recklessly shelled and occupied the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and its surroundings, though keeping the staff inside to run the facility. Ballistic and cruise missile attacks rained down on Ukraine's electricity generation and distribution facilities, the railway network, and more, and cyberattacks against almost every sector of the country's critical infrastructure, which had actually started weeks before the invasion, reached new levels. Europe's energy dilemma, with Russian use of its gas supplies as a means of economic warfare, also rose to the fore as a way to undermine the cohesion of NATO partners and their support for Ukraine, highlighting why belligerents, whether terrorists or nation states, target CI for their purposes, or in such a conflict.