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Future Terrorist threat to

critical infrastructure

Danny D. Burley

HSM 201 Homeland Security

Instructor: Christina Spoons

November 28, 2020

Critical Infrastructure in the U.S is described as assets, physical, and cyber systems that are very critical to the United States government. If they are destructed or incapacitated, a debilitating impact will occur on the economic or physical security and the countries safety and public health. Therefore, American society has been underpinned by the critical infrastructure since it usually provides essential services. Many critical infrastructures in the U.S have been identified to be very vulnerable to various cyber-attacks, especially the industrially controlled computer systems, which have been identified to have specific vulnerability points (Barrett, 2018). The federal government has issued warnings regarding the increasing interest of terrorists in the industrially controlled systems cyber-security. Therefore a successful cyber-attack usually poses consequences on critical infrastructure, which sometimes range from a catastrophic failure of the infrastructures to temporary service loss; that may affect multiples states for a given duration of time. This paper will look at cyber-terrorism as the future threat posed by terrorist groups to the critical U.S infrastructures.

Questions

Which are some of the critical infrastructure that is vulnerable to Cyber-attacks by terrorist groups?

What are some of the potential consequences of successful terrorist attacks on the cyber-systems of critical U.S infrastructure?

What are the government's initiatives and policy options to ensure that terrorist groups do not attack critical infrastructure systems?

Due to the development of modern technology and the vast adoption of globalization on a global scale, terrorist groups and organizations have engaged themselves in cyber-terrorism as a way of interfering with different government activities. This has led to the increased risk of national security since when critical infrastructures are under attack, the terrorist might end up accessing information that would pose a significant threat to the country's national security. Some of the essential infrastructures that may be vulnerable are the industrial control systems such as Distributed Controlled Systems (DCS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) (Taylor et al., 2019). The SCADA systems collect data from facilities in remote areas about the physical process state and send different commands used for controlling the physical processes, hence creating a control loop feedback.

These systems are used widely in water purification, petroleum refining, chemical processing, and electrical power generation. They are also used in nuclear plants; therefore, the SCADA system may be vulnerable to cyber-attack when there are faulty data implantation and remote access through the dial-ups modem used during maintenance. The consequences that can be got as a result of a successful cyber-attacks are disruption of distribution of electricity when there has been a successful attack on the electrical utilities.

When an attack is made by control systems facilities that produce chemical or natural gas, there might be widespread physical damage; cyber-attacks may also lead to waterworks and sewer treatment plants (Ghafir et al., 2018). Cyber-terrorism is also feared since it can lead to the amplification of effects of physical attacks; for example, a bombing attack on a building might be accompanied by cyber-terrorism where there is a temporary denial of telephone or electrical services; which in turn will delay the emergency response time until the services of electrical power and telephone are back, therefore, increasing the number of causalities and also cause a lot of public panics.

The initiative which has been put in place to protect the critical infrastructure is the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, which has managed to centralize within the Infrastructure protection and Director of Information Analysis. Some offices are created to secure critical infrastructure control systems; they include the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC) and the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office (CIAO). The policy options the government has put in place to address these issues include the developing of standards for the cyber-security of the control systems and also managing and identifying the critical interdependencies of the infrastructures.

Conclusion

To conclude, we can say that the industrial control systems are the most critical infrastructure which is highly vulnerable to cyber-attack. From the research we have conducted, it is clear that cyber-terrorism is the future threat posed by the terrorist groups in the country's critical infrastructure. Practical actions need to be put in place before the terrorist group integrates cyber-terrorism and physical terrorism in their attacks.

References

Barrett, M. P. (2018). Framework for improving critical infrastructure cybersecurity. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA, Tech. Rep.

Ghafir, I., Saleem, J., Hammoudeh, M., Faour, H., Prenosil, V., Jaf, S., ... & Baker, T. (2018). Security threats to critical infrastructure: the human factor. The Journal of Supercomputing, 74(10), 4986-5002.

Taylor, R. W., Fritsch, E. J., Liederbach, J., Saylor, M. R., & Tafoya, W. L. (2019). Cyber crime and cyber terrorism. New York, NY: Pearson.

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