Moving from Protection to Resiliency: A Path to Securing Critical Infrastructure

The events of 9/11 brought renewed focus to critical infrastructure, but the security of infrastructure has been and continues to be an issue outside the scope of any one event or country. Oil pipeline attacks in Iraq, massive blackouts in Italy, the United States, and Russia, submarine cable failures in the Atlantic, accidental and intentional failures of infrastructure are an increasing and complex problem. The issue of infrastructure security is a global problem both is applicability and connectivity. All nations are dependent on infrastructure and many of these infrastructures cross international borders and some span the globe. A problem facing all nations is that they have the responsibility for securing infrastructure but critical aspects are owned by the private sector. This though is only one of many problems facing infrastructure security: 1) infrastructures are interdependent on each others reliability 2) infrastructures are large, dynamically unsynchronized, and complex 3) sharing information about infrastructure vulnerabilities is severely hampered by fears of regulation and competition. Along with these direct obstacles there are larger economic forces that complicate the issue. The markets driving infrastructure are geared towards maximizing efficiency to increase profit and not maximizing protection, which can result in public vulnerabilities.