Addressing Urgent Cyber Threats to Critical Infrastructure: Report of the President's National Infrastructure Advisory Council - Innovative Recommendations Including Creation of Dark Fiber Network

This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction.

Our review of hundreds of studies and interviews with 38 cyber and industry experts revealed an echo chamber, loudly reverberating what needs to be done to secure critical U.S. infrastructure against aggressive and targeted cyber attacks. Cyber is the sole arena where private companies are the front line of defense in a nation-state attack on U.S. infrastructure. When a cyber attack can deliver the same damage or consequences as a kinetic attack, it requires national leadership and close coordination of our collective resources, capabilities, and authorities. The National Security Council (NSC) tasked the President's National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) with examining how Federal authorities and capabilities can best be applied to support cybersecurity of high-risk assets. We reviewed a comprehensive dataset of more than 140 Federal capabilities and authorities, demonstrating impressive depth and complexity of Federal resources. We believe the U.S. government and private sector collectively have the tremendous cyber capabilities and resources needed to defend critical private systems from aggressive cyber attacks—provided they are properly organized, harnessed, and focused. Today, we're falling short. NIAC details 11 recommendations. The first is perhaps the most innovative:

Establish SEPARATE, SECURE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS specifically designated for the most critical cyber networks, including "dark fiber" networks for critical control system traffic and reserved spectrum for backup communications during emergencies.

Contents * Executive Summary: Imperative Takeaways * Introduction * Our Task * Our Assessment * Recommendations and Supporting Findings * Moving Forward: Fundamental Change * Appendix A. Study Methodology * Appendix B. Acknowledgements * Appendix C. Urgency of Cyber Threats to Critical Sectors * Appendix D. National Cyber Governance: United Kingdom and Israeli Models * Appendix E. References