Challenges in Securing Critical Infrastructure: Modern Solutions Required

Critical infrastructure refers to physical and digital assets that are crucial for national security, economy, public health, or safety. It can be government or privately owned and includes not only power plants or electricity but also monetary systems. 

Cyber attacks on critical infrastructure have become a preferred target due to their significant impact, with examples including attacks on Ukraine’s power grid (2015), Kansas’s nuclear plant (2018), the SWIFT network, and Colonial Pipeline. 

These attacks may be motivated by various factors such as testing capabilities, financial gains, data theft, remote access, or service disruption. Perpetrators could be nation-states, cybercriminals, or hacktivists. 

Securing critical infrastructure, which includes industrial control systems (ICS) like SCADA, is crucial due to the potential for wide-scale compromise in vital systems such as transportation, oil and gas, electricity, water, and wastewater. 

Interdependencies between infrastructure sectors mean that a single failure can have a negative impact on multiple sectors. The financial implications of cyberattacks on ICS are significant, with potential costs of downtime ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 per minute. 

Cybercr

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