Horizon 2020 approaches for protecting critical infrastructure

Threats against critical infrastructure limit the liberties of citizens and put the functioning of societies and their economies at risk. The security and resilience of Europe’s critical infrastructure needs to be ensured since disruptions in their operations may entail the collapse of entire sectors. A comprehensive approach is needed to secure connected and interdependent installations, as well as plants and systems.

Recently, infrastructures are facing an increasing number of combined physical and cyber-attacks due to their interdependencies. Prevention, detection, response and mitigation of threats to critical facilities and equipment are therefore necessary. That’s why the Horizon 2020 Programme implies to enhance the forecast, assessment and prevention of physical and cyber risks, as well as a quick response in case of an incident. Modern cities are usually relying on interconnected networks and have many open spaces or gathering areas, which play a central role.

“In the cities, public spaces such as malls, open crowded gathering areas and events, and non-restricted areas of transport infrastructures, constitute “soft targets”, that is potential, numerous targets spread across the urban area and subject to “low cost” attacks strongly impacting the citizens.”[1]

The security and operation of a smart and safe city relies on interconnected, complex and interdependent networks and systems. Therefore, the modern smart city requires a common cybersecurity management approach. The screening of such data should be used by security practitioners to enhance their capabilities and performances. But also the civil society and social media can be involved. Aside from that, other parts of vital infrastructure should be considered — like healthcare, the food chain, or transport.

Food chain

The food production is a key factor for a functioning society. Therefore, the protection of the food chain infrastructure is crucial. Food safety risks occur along the food chain from a number of biological and chemical contaminants.

Therefore “Improving risk assessment and monitoring, including the use of big data, is of major importance. Developing integrated approaches along the entire food chain for detecting, assessing, and mitigating relevant pathogens and contaminant hazards is essential.”[2]

This implies efficient food safety control systems, supported by reliable authentication and traceability approaches, being implemented across the entire food chain. The Horizon 2020 programme therefore targets the development of an integrated approach for detecting, assessing and mitigating food safety risks from biological and chemical hazards from primary production to consumers, including common risks such as environmental contamination, process contamination, contamination through packaging, and misuse or adulteration.

Health care

The healthcare-related infrastructure is constantly being transformed by novel digital technology, robots or artificial intelligence, which offers new opportunities like connected medical devices. Since this new ICT infrastructure has become vital for functioning hospitals due to increasing connectivity, the exposure to risks of cyber-crime is constantly increasing. Since cyberattacks are a potential danger to the safety of patients, Horizon 2020 aims at the development and implementation of guidelines and tools addressing the need for cybersecurity in hospitals. Innovative authentication systems within hospitals should be implemented, as well as secure information sharing between healthcare organizations. Awareness-raising of staff workers in healthcare settings on security and data privacy is another priority to further protect the infrastructure.

Transport and mobility

Human factors are the largest cause of accidents across all transport modes, which is why automation and technical development could be an answer to human failure. Nevertheless, machines are inherently less flexible than humans and lack situational awareness.

“The challenge is to improve transport safety through a more timely, focused and integrated adoption of human factors in the design of road or rail vehicles, vessels or aircraft, infrastructure and the mobility system – taking advantage of automation – as well as increasing knowledge of enhanced human machine interactions to further advance the use of automation without introducing new, previously unknown, safety risks.”[3]

ICT

It is the ambition for the European Union to become a world leader in secure digital economy. Consequently, the protection against attacks targeting modern ICT components, complex ICT infrastructures and emerging technologies is essential. Hence it is necessary to develop tools and services guaranteeing an adequate level of data security for digital collaboration between manufacturing environments and value chains. Autonomous solutions, requiring little or no local supervision are encouraged by the commission.

The general protection of key infrastructure is a cross-cutting topic that involves many different areas and therefore is not easy to approach. Hence it is vital to find comprehensive satisfactory safety means, since citizens are dependent on our interconnectivity.

References

[1] European Commission. (2017). Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2018-2020. Secure societies. P.12

[2] European Commission. (2017). Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2018-2020. Food security. P.62

[3] European Commission. (2017). Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2018-2020. Smart transport. P.35

Keywords

Secure transport, secure food, secure health, smart cities, human failure, infrastructure protection