RAND Corporation: "Defending the United States Against Critical Infrastructure Attacks —Exploring a Hypothetical Campaign of Cascading Impacts"

From The RAND Corporation, June 11, 2024:

In this report, the authors discuss threats to critical infrastructure (CI) and put forward a hypothetical case study to examine several phases of an adversarial attack on the United States. The attack is intended to constrain U.S. decisionmaking, disrupt military deployment, and impose strategically relevant costs on the civilian populace.

The authors aggregate CIs into seven classes to demonstrate how an attack on any one of these categories can have outsized effects because of interdependencies between infrastructure assets, systems, and networks.

Because of the interconnected nature of CI systems, damage to one system can adversely affect another. This may lead to a cascading hazard, producing disruptions across geographic boundaries and CIs. The authors draw on reports of recent attacks on U.S. CI systems to inform the case study. These real-world events demonstrate interdependencies, probable effects, and challenges that could arise from future potential adversarial action targeting infrastructure in the homeland. Finally, the authors recommend actions to reduce the likelihood and severity of disruptions to U.S. CI in the event of attacks by a capable adversary.

Key Findings...

....MUCH MORE

Reports from RAND's 'Inverted Rook' tabletop scenario wargame:

Threats to Critical Infrastructure, A Survey (36 page PDF) 

Defending the Homeland Against Critical Infrastructure Attacks

Exploring a Hypothetical Campaign of Cascading Impacts (16 page PDF)

Earlier today:

• "Mass IT outage: here's a list of some of the companies and operations affected"
• Dammit! Cyber Polygon 2024 Wasn't Supposed To Happen Until September!