Infrastructure security

Infrastructure security is the security provided to protect infrastructure, especially critical infrastructure, such as airports, highways rail transport, hospitals, bridges, transport hubs, network communications, media, the electricity grid, dams, power plants, seaports, oil refineries, liquefied natural gas terminals and water systems. Infrastructure security seeks to limit vulnerability of these structures and systems to sabotage, terrorism, and contamination.

Critical infrastructures naturally utilize information technology as this capability has become more and more available. As a result, they have become highly interconnected, and interdependent. Intrusions and disruptions in one infrastructure might provoke unexpected failures in others, which makes handing interdependencies a key concern.

There are several examples where an incident at one critical infrastructure site affects others. For example, in 2003, the Northeastern American areas experienced a power outage that appears to have originated in the Midwest, and possibly from a tree branch. In 2013, damage caused by a sniper attack at an electrical substation in California threatened power distribution throughout Silicon Valley. The 2020 Nashville bombing caused telecommunications outages in several states.