Modern life is increasingly dependent on a multitude of interconnected and interdependent infrastructures. While sectors such as food, water, health and transportation and the infrastructure that supports them have always been critical, their ability to deliver is increasingly enmeshed with the information and communications technologies that have become essential components of daily life.
Although cyberspace – the sum of these components – is sometimes categorized as a discrete sector, in practice it is so deeply embedded into sectors such as energy and transport as to make any separation meaningless. Cyberspace can be visualized instead as a thin layer or nervous system running through all other sectors, enabling them to communicate and function.
Security of the cyber layer is of great societal importance, yet the dense interconnections between sectors – facilitated by cyberspace – make it harder to decide what to protect. As transportation intertwines with food distribution and telecommunications, and as these and many others sectors are supported fundamentally by the finance and energy sectors, it is more difficult to draw clear boundaries between critical areas.
It is becoming harder to identify the nodes and connection points whose protection must be prioritized. The result is that in the public debate, at least, critical infrastructure sectors tend to be categorized very broadly, to the extent that they encompass almost every aspect of daily life. The problem, therefore, is that when everything is ‘critical’, nothing is.
This makes it difficult to counter emerging threats, which are growing along with dependencies. Dramatic yet hypothetical scenarios, such as acts of cyber-enabled terrorism, cannot be ruled out, but they overshadow the more mundane but identifiable and persistent damage caused by organized crime and hacking.
So says the start of a Chatham House paper on cyber-security.
Visit the think-tank’s website for more.
