Critical Infrastructure: The Big Picture

Most people at least vaguely comprehend that modern civilization is supported by a vast web of dependencies on services, energy, resources, and manufacturing. Yet only a small percentage perceive and grasp the true depth, breadth, and fragility of that critical web. Indeed, in the developed world especially, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) states “16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.“[1] 

Over the next many weeks, we are going to take a look at a number of these sectors to highlight the fragility of today’s modern civilization and its vulnerability to aspects of a selected subset. We will also touch briefly on;

•  the workforce required to sustain the critical infrastructure (CI)  
  
• a deeper look at the importance of access to natural resources also required for technologically advanced civilization sustainment, and 
  
• much simpler, less technologically advanced civilization examples/models.

Critical Infrastructure Sectors

• Energy Sector

  • Electricity, oil, and natural gas—to include the production, refining, storage, and distribution of oil, gas, and electric power, except for hydroelectric and commercial nuclear power facilities and pipelines

• Water and Wastewater Systems Sector

  • Clean drinking water and wastewater facility planning, construction, operation, maintenance, and monitoring

• Transportation Systems Sector

  • Highway & motor carrier, mass transit, freight rail, pipeline, maritime, aviation, postal & shipping, aviation

  • Enabling legitimate travelers and goods to move without significant disruption of commerce, undue fear of harm, or loss of civil liberties

• Information Technology Sector

  • IT products and services, incident management, domain name services, identity and trust management, internet information services, internet networking services

• Food and Agriculture Sector

  • The supply chains for feed, animals, and animal products; crop production and the supply chains of seed, fertilizer, and other necessary related materials; and the post-harvesting components of the food supply chain, from processing, production, and packaging through storage and distribution to retail sales, institutional food services, and restaurant or home consumption

• Chemical Sector

  • chemical manufacturing, transportation, storage, and warehousing facilities to support research, pharmaceutical, agricultural, petrochemical, and water treatment applications, to name a few

• Communications Sector

  • voice, video, and data services on the core network: broadcasting, cable, satellite, wireless, and wireline networks

• Critical Manufacturing Sector

  • processes raw materials and produces highly specialized parts and equipment that are essential to primary operations in several U.S. industries—particularly transportation, defense, electricity, and major construction

• Defense Industrial Base Sector

  • R&D, systems integration, and bases/facilities to provide defense capabilities, force structure, and readiness
    

• Financial Services Sector

  • Depository institutions, providers of investment products, insurance companies, other credit and financing organizations, and the providers of the critical financial utilities and services that include: (1) deposit, consumer credit, and payment systems products; (2) credit and liquidity products; (3) investment products; and (4) risk transfer products.

• Government Facilities Sector

  • Public facilities such as offices and office building complexes; housing for government employees; correctional facilities; embassies, consulates, and border facilities; education facilities; courthouses; maintenance and repair shops; libraries and archives; monuments

  • Non-Public facilities such as research and development facilities; military installations, record centers; space exploration facilities; storage facilities for weapons and ammunition, precious metals, currency, and special nuclear materials and waste; warehouses used to store property and equipment

• Healthcare and Public Health Sector

  • building and sustaining community health resilience; enhancing and expanding the Nation’s medical capacity for everyday healthcare; improving health-related situational awareness capabilities; enhancing the integration of HPH capabilities into emergency management systems in effective ways; and strengthening global health security

• Emergency Services Sector

  • a wide range of prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery services during both steady-state and incident management operation across all levels of government

• Dams Sector

  • Design, construction, maintenance, and monitoring of dam projects, hydropower plants, navigation locks, levees, dikes, hurricane barriers, mine tailings and other industrial waste impoundments, or other similar water retention and water control facilities.

• Commercial Facilities Sector

  • Entertainment and Media, Gaming, Lodging, Outdoor Events, Public Assembly, Real Estate, Retail, and Sports League

• Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste Sector (where applicable)

  • commercial nuclear power plants; non-power reactors used for research, training, and radioisotope production; fuel-cycle facilities; and nuclear and radioactive materials used in medical, industrial, and academic settings.

  • transportation, storage, and disposal of nuclear materials, and radioactive waste

Sector Interdependencies

Not only do technologically advanced civilizations have dependencies on all the above sectors, but there are dependencies between the sectors themselves, requiring planning, coordination, implementation, monitoring, and maintenance. Figure 1 identifies a high level abstraction of a the most critical sector dependency in the center (energy) with other central critical sector dependencies in the next order of importance (communications, transportation, and water).

Not only do technologically advanced civilizations have dependencies on all the above sectors, but there are dependencies between the sectors themselves, requiring continual planning, coordination, implementation, monitoring, and maintenance. Figure 1 identifies a high level abstraction of a the most critical sector dependency in the center (energy) with other central critical sector dependencies in the next order of importance (communications, transportation, and water).

 

Figure 1: Critical Infrastructure Dependency Hierarchy [2]

 

Due to the secondary, tertiary, and additional layers of dependency, a loss of a sector can cause a cascading effect of failure in multiple other sectors. Figure 2 shows a very simple cascading example.

 Figure 2 - Sector cascading from localized failure [3]

Dependencies can be one way (e.g., sector A relies upon sector B), or two way (e.g., sectors A and B depend upon each other). Figure 3 highlights an example of a two way dependency between Electric Power and Communications.

 

Figure 3: Two way sector dependency example [3]

Dependency Forms

Dependencies span the range physical, geographic, cyber, or logical.

Table 1: Forms of Dependencies [3]

Class Description Example Physical Operations rely on other infrastructure and supply chains to provide services and/or commodities as an input A water facility relies on chemicals and electricity produced by external providers Cyber Operations rely on information and data produced or managed by others. A fuel terminal relies on IT and communication systems to operate accounting and billing systems to distribute fuel. Geographic Operations of multiple systems are collocated and susceptible to similar hazards or a single disruption. Gas, electric, and water lines sharing a right of way can all be disrupted simultaneously. Logical Operations rely on other systems due to economic, policy, or human factors. Travel restrictions enacted in one state may impact cross-state transportation of goods causing supply chain issues or new regulations on the chemical sector may impact the operations of sectors who use chemicals, such as water and food & agriculture.

References

1  Other nations have similar critical infrastructure sector lists, such as the EU nations, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others. A sampling can be found at; https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/2016-frgng-cmmn-ndrstndng-crtcalnfrstrctr/index-en.aspx

2  US, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Energy Sector-Specific Plan, 2015, https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/nipp-ssp-energy-2015-508.pdf

3  US, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), What are Dependencies?, accessed Nov 2022, https://www.cisa.gov/what-are-dependencies