Critical infrastructure covers services whose failure would seriously harm the public, including energy, water, health, transport, finance, and communications.
A cyber incident in these services is not only a business loss, because people may lose safety, care, travel, or access to money.
How it works
Operators face long lived equipment, suppliers, and safety rules that general office security does not capture.
Availability and integrity can matter more than secrecy when a control system keeps a plant inside safe limits, yet that does not make confidentiality optional for customer data, and it changes which failure you rehearse first.
Protection relies on segmentation between office and operational networks, careful remote access, tested backups, and relationships with regulators and peer operators.
Plans should say how you will run a reduced but safe service if computers cannot be trusted, and who is allowed to make that call.
Concrete examples
- A water utility isolates a treatment network so an office incident cannot directly change chemical dosing.
- A hospital continues emergency care from paper and local procedures when the scheduling system is unavailable.
- A power operator coordinates with the sector contact when an incident could affect more than one company.
Protective measures
- Separate operational networks from ordinary office access, and review every remote path into the operational side.
- Rehearse a reduced safe mode that keeps people safe even when usual computers must be disconnected.
- Know the regulator and sector contacts you will call, and keep those numbers outside the affected systems.
- Test backups and spare procedures on a schedule that matches safety duties, not only financial reporting.