The Telecoms Inclusion Principle

Abstract

Communications and information technologies play an increasingly important role both within and between national critical infrastructures. From the food that we eat to the water that we drink, to the energy that we use across all modes of transportation to the systems that protect us when we travel in those systems; we rely on information infrastructures. These interdependencies will increase rapidly in coming years. For instance, the European SESAR programme and the US NextGen initiative are using computational systems to increase the efficiency and maintain the safety of air traffic management with increasing numbers of flights. Similarly, a range of ‘smart grid’ initiatives depend upon computational infrastructures to coordinate the supply and demand of renewable and conventional power sources. The benefits that are provided by telecommunications and information technologies also creates new vulnerabilities, for instance, it is increasingly difficult for national critical infrastructures to recover and reorganise their service provision in the aftermath of computational failures. It is for these reasons that this chapter proposes a telecoms inclusion principle. This states that it order to assess the resilience of any national critical infrastructure we must consider the failure modes and resilience capabilities of telecommunications infrastructures. A consequence of this principle is that the failure of telecommunications infrastructures must be considered in all contingency plans, in drills and exercises, as well as the recovery strategies that are used to mitigate the consequences of an adverse event.