Challenges in Securing Critical IT Infrastructure in 2023

Critical infrastructures (CI) of the majority of enterprises, irrespective of their size, industry, or type, will have physical and virtual assets integrated into the system.

It becomes an essential part of the IT infrastructure to ensure successful operations within a complex functioning business ecosystem. As these critical assets are crucial for businesses to function, any disruption due to cyber threats can have devastating impacts on business continuity. CISOs need to design and enforce a proactive strategy to manage the cyber threats and risks within CI.

However, with the growing complexity of the threats and vulnerabilities, it has become a dynamic challenge for the SecOps teams to secure their CI. Even the cybercrime industry is evolving into a very sophisticated industry with easy availability of Cybercrime-as-a-Service. This gives immense potential to even amateur cybercriminals to carry full-blown attacks on CI despite better security posture in place. Following are a few challenges that SecOps teams might face in protecting their critical infrastructure against sophisticated cyber threats and risks:

Supply chain security-driven challenges

Securing the supply can be a complex and daunting task that needs endpoint network protection that serves particular purposes. Earlier, the supply chain network had various hardware components, software, and managed services from vendors that worked together to accomplish the business goals as the entire world has moved to a digital supply chain to meet the demands of the market demand for more resilient, transparent, and agile. Businesses need to allow access to their business network to third-party vendors for seamless business operations. However, it becomes one of the significant challenges in securing the IT infrastructure is the threats exposed to the business network because of other vendors and suppliers.

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It is crucial to identify all the potential cybersecurity attack surface areas and workflows through the end-to-end supply chains that cybercriminals can leverage as a security weakness and then move laterally into the network. CISOs need to determine all the attack surface areas to make necessary changes in their security posture to ensure resiliency.

Sophistication in the Cybercrime-as-a-Service industry

Cybercrime enterprises are now replicating a legit business model, which has made it easy for cybercriminals to successfully accomplish an attack even on critical infrastructure. Cybercriminals today have easy access to Phishing-as-a-Service and Ransomware-as-a-Service, which they can select to infiltrate the business network and move laterally to gain access to the critical infrastructure of the business network.

The most significant challenge in securing the CI of any business is the easy availability of the resources and skillsets to accomplish a cyber-attack.

Lack of required skillsets and resources.

It is essential for businesses to keep CI security as one of their top priorities. However, as the threat landscape is evolving to be more dynamic, it has become challenging for an enterprise to efficiently identify and mitigate the threats in real time because of the lack of resources and skill sets. Because of this, businesses find it difficult to have efficient public-private collaboration and coordination to enforce regulatory compliance to ensure network security all the time.

Also Read: Challenges in Protecting Critical Infrastructure against Cyber Threats

Workforce-related Challenges

Another significant challenge while protecting the critical assets of the business network is the workforce. Many organizations tend to overlook the human aspect of security, even though access is given to limited resources. These resources can expose the entire business network to various vulnerabilities and risks that can create potential business disruptions. It is crucial for businesses to create awareness of critical infrastructure security.

Businesses need to consider all of these critical infrastructure challenges before designing and implementing a cybersecurity posture and tech stack. CISOs that create a strategy considering all the challenges will have resilience in the security.