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Partnership Structure

This is collaboration that exists between communities within the critical infrastructure ecosystem and the government with an aim of improving security and resilience within their operating environment. Critical infrastructure refers to systems and assets that are very key to Americans life and whose compromise or destruction can threaten the nation security, public safety and economic security. The critical infrastructure is exposed to threats such as pandemics, cyber threats, acts of terrorism, extreme weather changes, technical failures among other challenges. The Federal government understands the critical infrastructure is owned and run by private entities, but, these entities cannot be trusted to secure these critical infrastructures alone. This is because the level of tolerance of security threats is much lower in the government (DHS, 2013).

The partnership structure enables the critical infrastructure community to take well-coordinated actions that strengthen security and resilience of vital systems and assets. These actions are informed by the actionable and relevant information shared by the players in the critical infrastructure community. The partnership also helps in building resilience that help in reducing the adverse impact of incidences. This is through proper advance planning, laying down mitigation structures and ensuring response and recovery measures in case of occurrence of a disruption are effective (DHS, 2013).

Critical Infrastructure Sector: The Transport System

Transport system is part of critical infrastructures. The transport system consists of aviation, maritime, highways, rail, pipelines and mass transit. The transport system is used to move citizens and goods both locally and internationally. The sector faces risks such as; physical and cyber terrorism, the aging infrastructure, natural disasters and extreme weather events. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Transportation are the Federal agencies (Sector Specific Agencies) that coordinate the security and resilience in this sector (DHS, 2013). The DHS assigns the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the United States Coast Guard (USCG) the role of the Sector Specific Agency in the transport sector.

The TSA and USCG together with Department of Transport builds partnership with public and private entities in the transport system to encourage sharing of vital security information in the sector. The sector goals are to prevent and thwart terrorism acts that may cause destruction of sector infrastructure and cause loss of life. These agencies also build security and resilience network throughout the nations transport system (DHS, n.d.). The security partners in the transport sector includes; Federal agencies, State, Local, Tribal and Territorial governments, nongovernmental organizations, critical infrastructure owners and operators (both public and private).

The security partners develop Transportation System Sector Specific Plan (TS SSP) that play a big role in reducing infrastructure risks. The TS SSP details the methodology that is used in managing security and resilience efforts that utilize capabilities of the transport system sector community. The Transport sector mission is to improve security and facilitate smooth movement of travelers and goods, without disruption, fear of harm and infringement of civil liberties. In this regard, the TS SSP goal is to manage physical, human made and cyber security risks that are aimed at transportation infrastructure, put in use sector response and recovery capabilities and implement processes that facilitate collaboration within the transport system community (DHS, 2015).

The transport system is linked to other critical sectors like Chemical, dams, defense, communication, emergency services, food and agriculture, energy, manufacturing, water and wastewater systems. If the transport system is affected it can trigger mass destruction of lives and properties. For example, emergency services like ambulances depend on the resilient transport network in responding to emergencies. If the transport system is affected providing these services will be a challenge. The same with food and agriculture sector, if the rail, maritime and truck systems are not in order it will be impossible to ship food and thus nation’s food supply chain will be at risk. The manufacturing industries will not be able to get raw materials and their products will not be abler to reach market. This means transport system attack can lead to economic sabotage (DHS, 2015).

SCADA Systems


Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are automated systems that are used to monitor and control critical infrastructures like communication, electric grid lines, gas and oil pipelines and water. These systems can work remotely via signals. This makes them to be a target of cyber terrorism as they can be controlled without physical contact (Krambeck, 2015). Initially, SCADA systems were not developed with security as an issue of concern. This is because they were operated by engineers, system technicians and operators and technology was not advanced as it is today. This makes SCADA systems to be vulnerable to security attacks. The SCADA system attacker’s exploit issues such as SCADA is a legacy software and thus it does not have security features such as user authentication. SCADA system network is not protected and can be misconfigured and thus firewalls cannot detect unsuspicious activities. SCADA systems uses default setting, this makes these systems to be easier to attack as they use default passwords (Paganini, 2020)
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