Cybersecurity: a Modern Challenge for Critical Infrastructures

Recent years have been characterized by an increase in cyber attacks against sovereign states’ critical infrastructures, government offices, and economic institutions. The attacks have been both oriented to the control of the infrastructure (such as Stuxnet, the computer virus which infected computers controlling uranium enrichment facilities in Iran in 2010 (Fildes, 2010)) and to espionage and stealing of information, not only usernames and passwords, but also sensitive data (such as Flame, a malware discovered in 2012, used for targeted cyber espionage in Middle Eastern countries (Nakashima, Miller, Tate, 2012). The aforementioned cases are practical examples that cyber attacks are no more bound to a limited scale and that the nature of possible targets is increasingly critical. With it, the potential for harmful consequences on civil society is also increasing. Starting from the assumption that both direct (like Stuxnet) and indirect (espionage) attacks constitute the main “cyber issues” for critical infrastructures today, the central contribution of the paper will be constituted by an overview of the current situation in the strategic framework, along with some basic guidelines aiming at prevention of future threats. The literature in this field is mainly constituted either by general assumptions on security, such as the documents on cybersecurity strategy promoted by the European Commission and by the United States in 2013, or by technical and “niche” manuals for engineers. This paper will try to give a summery of the current situation and the actual problems that encompass the physical security of infrastructures and their Industrial Control Systems for the protection of sensitive data, trying to integrate the technical and the strategic point of view. The document will firstly outline the strategic implications of a cyberattack, i.e its deterrent value, then, an alternative method to increase the cybersecurity for critical infrastructures will be proposed, that’s to say resilience. Following that, a short part will describe the danger of the insider threat, as an equal, if not worse threat compared to the external once. The paper will end with an overview on Europe and the steps taken in order to regulate cybersecurity for critical infrastructures, with a special focus on Italy and the measures taken to grant stability, protection and security to national critical infrastructures in the modern cyber arena.