KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 23): Russia’s recent cyberattacks on Ukrainian government websites and Ukraine’s allies’ increasing concerns over industrial control systems prove the magnitude and chaos these attacks can reach.
In a statement on Monday (Feb 21), technology and consulting firm Gartner Inc said every executive and every business in every country relies on critical infrastructure throughout daily life.
Gartner VP analyst Katell Thielemann said critical infrastructure sectors include energy production and transmission, water and waste water, healthcare, and food and agriculture.
She said not only are each of these sectors critical to the appropriate functioning of modern societies, but they are also interdependent, and an attack on one can have a direct impact on others.
Thielemann said that for example, in the event that drinking water production or waste-water treatments are impacted as a result of the ongoing threats on US water and waste-water systems, citizens would be deprived of safe drinking water and sanitation.
She said in addition, hospitals would not be able to operate, fire hoses would not work, and schools, offices and government facilities would be impacted.
“Similar domino effects would occur in the event that any other critical infrastructure sector is targeted.
Thielemann said that looking forward, chief information security officers and security and risk management leaders should define what their high-value assets are, so that triage and decision-making about what to bring back up first doesn’t occur on the fly, and secure mission-critical backups offline or in cloud environments.
“They need to review with urgency their network segmentation both in enterprise IT systems and for high-value cyber-physical systems in operational or mission-critical environments,” she said.