Chapter 1: About (inter)national critical infrastructures

1.1 Defining critical infrastructures

A country’s critical infrastructures are the specific facilities, services and informational systems that are vital to its national security, economy, public health, and for the security and well functioning of the Government itself. The failure or destruction of such critical infrastructures could heavily weaken or threaten the latter. As such, both the management and protection of critical infrastructures go hand in hand.

Each country is responsible for identifying the national infrastructures that are critical for its security and stability. However, there are certain infrastructures deemed critical by most states.

Which are Romania’s critical …show more content…
It initially focused on three main industries: electricity, communications and computers. However, following the increase in terrorist attacks such as the 1993 World Trade Center bomb attacks and the 2001 fall of the twin towers led to the United States proposal that an international partnership should be agreed upon in order to collaboratively face globalized vulnerabilities and attacks. At the end of 2001, the US launched the Executive Order for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures. Two years later, the US tackled cyber security too with the National Strategy of Securing the Cyber Space, where it expanded the notion of critical infrastructures to include water and food management, public health, medical emergency responses, national defence, chemical and toxic substances management etc. This lead to international agencies such as NATO and the EU to also acknowledge the importance of such critical infrastructures and of partnerships for securing …show more content…
Overlooking or bad management of a vulnerability can have serious consequences on the country’s interests and objectives.
Risks are defined as particular contexts, elements or situations (internal and external) that favor the creation of a direct threat.
Threats are then considered capabilities, intentions, strategies and plans that aim to destabilize critical infrastructures by means of gestures, attitudes, or direct actions. The result of threats can include instability, insecurity and dangers of the critical infrastructures and the authorities and citizens relying on them.
Finally, aggressions are defined as attacks (military, cybernetic) that target the weakening or failure of critical infrastructures, with serious consequences for the everyday life.

All these types of security issues can refer to natural disasters, technical and technological errors, human errors but also intentional attacks such as military or cybernetic.

Based on these types of security issues, there are four major strategic objectives of the national strategy on critical infrastructures, as follow