Define critical infrastructure and services. Provide a high level overview of po

Question

Define critical infrastructure and services. Provide a high level overview of potential cyber risks to US critical infrastructure and services-- feel free to use real world examples to demonstrate risk. How can the US, and healthcare institutions more specifically, increase the resiliency of critical infrastructure and services?

*Don't think of critical infrastructures as separate but rather as related entities. An adversary doesn't have to hack a hospital network to shut down the hospital. He/She could just as easily hack into the electrical or heating utilities networks if they're a softer target (think January in Boston without heat) to effectively shut down a hospital.

Explanation / Answer

Critical infrastructure and services are those services and institutions which is considered so vital that disruption or temporary shutdown for a moment of time can cause huge effect in national security, national economic security, national public health and safety and maybe combination of all or some.

Recently, cyber attackers are targeting these critical infrastructure and services and deliberately trying to disrupt it by means of unethical actions.

Critical US infrastructures like electricity plants, transport systems, healthcare system grid are maintained and controlled by Industrial control systems (ICS) and supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA).

The healthcare sector protects all sectors from hazards such as terrorism, disease outbreak, natural disasters. Most of the healthcare institutions are privately owned hence the information sharing between all the institutions is not done properloy, which it should be. Suppose a new disease outbreaks a hospital may know the drug that can prevent it, but since all the hospitals do not have a single database to share all the information they have , other patients in other hospitals may not be able to get that treatment.

So if a cyber-attacker is able to shut down the infrastructure of the hospital for a moment of time then it will not be able to share the information of the drug and its details, and will aid more in spread of the disease and time passes by without curing it.

National Infrastructure protection plan and risk management has been implemented to protect the health care sector. Here each sector within the healthcare system develops a plan to share information among them and also plan coordinated efforts in case of an emergency. This is just like a government aided partnership plan between all the sectors within healthcare system.

The healthcare Sector as a whole , is not a separate functioning entity. It depends on other critical sectors also for its survival. For example, electrical, food, water, transport, communication, IT sectors.

So as healthcare sector is not a separate independent entity but a related entity.

So, if a hacker hacks the dependent entity and is able to shut it down or disrupt it then healthcare sector will also be disrupted. So attacking a single critical sector can also trigger the disruption of all the services related to it. To prevent this healthcare sector has to create a backup plan and prepare if the connection between the it and the other dependent entity is lost. This backup plan should make sure that the healthcare sector keeps on running even though the other dependent sector is down. For example arranging power generators in case electricity is disrupted, keeping handy satellite phones in case communication system breaks down and keeping helicopters standby so that they can transport patients in case road is not available to use.

I have solved your question. Please do not forget to give a positive like to the answer. Thank you.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse D
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.