Ensuring the security and availability of critical infrastructure in a changing cyber-threat environment

STUXNET, the first state-developed cyber weapon, a computer code capable of producing physical/kinetic effects on the target device or system, used to attack the critical infrastructure of another state, was a turning point in the security of cyberspace. Cybersecurity professionals understood that the most sophisticated cyber-attacks now extended to the engineering behind the technologies used to support the operations of critical infrastructure. As Langner (2016) has concluded, ‘Sophisticated attackers go after your engineering systems … and do not need on-line access’.