Resilient Critical Infrastructures

Critical infrastructures, such as the electric grid, water supply systems or transportation systems, empower our modern society. Their disruption can seriously impair the daily lives of millions of people and jeopardize the economy. Due to this fact, they are attractive targets in a cyber war or in large-scale sophisticated attacks. Moreover, in disasters or crises, critical infrastructures might face severe perturbations or even a breakdown, thus affecting the population at large. This chapter begins by introducing the concept of resiliency in critical infrastructures: resilient infrastructures are designed to withstand disasters, crises, and negative influence. They can maintain their core functionalities even under attack. The chapter subsequently discusses how critical infrastructures can be made resilient. This requires adopting a defence in depth concept, i.e. deploying multiple layers of security controls, but we also provide further recommendations to this end.