Cyber attacks on critical infrastructure

Cyber-security is become increasingly important throughout nearly every industrial sector. However, recently state infrastructure systems including (but not limited to) water treatment, electricity production, transportation, and manufacturing industries have been dealing with a rise of cyber-attack attempts from “hacktivists”. This article provides various examples of real cases which have involved critical infrastructure’s safety being compromised at various levels. Though all are important in understanding what can be done to improve cyber-security among different industries, perhaps one of the most notable cases discussed is the 2015 attack against Ukrainian utilities companies, which resulted in “hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity for six hours”. This event is important because it highlights the unexpectedness and resulting harmfulness of a cyber-attack on a state’s infrastructure.
It is important to maintain such complex systems under proper cyber-security standards, as attacks can result in chain reactions leaving not only a small number of individuals to face harmful experiences but nearly a whole nation. This article also mentions that according to the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), there was nearly a doubling of cyber-attacks attempted against U.S. critical manufacturing (note that this statement refers to only one of the important sectors of critical infrastructure). As technology continues to develop, and infrastructure sectors become increasingly reliant on industrial control systems, it is important for a state to secure their operational technologies, an element that is among the least protected when it comes to critical infrastructure sectors’ cyber-security.
With the proliferating success of the Internet of Things (IoT), the physical world is becoming much more connected to the digital/cyber world, resulting in a well-justified cause for concern among states. As personal and professional interconnected devices become much more common among individual users, virtual networks are seen as much more susceptible to attacks. Idan Udi Edry (Chief Executive Officer at Nation-E) states in this article that if a state is able to develop the proper technology to increase the labor/time costs of malicious attacks, it may be easier to prevent cyber-attacks against different sectors of critical infrastructure.