Next Generation Information-Based Infrastructures

Abstract

Advancements of information and communication technologies (ICT) cause infrastructure owners to augment current infrastructures with such ICT. The creation of more efficient and effective end-user services provides economical benefits and increases customer satisfaction. Concurrently, ICT advancements allow governmental and industrial sectors to develop complete new infrastructures and infrastructure services, the so called Next Generation Infrastructures (NGI). NGI will offer new services to society, end-users and the supply-chain of organisations and linked, dependent infrastructural services. For over fifty years, the introduction of new ICT-based services and infrastructures has been tightly coupled with failures in ICT-security. This chapter on NGI discusses the root causes of these security failures. Based on historical experiences, this chapter predicts threats and cyber security failures alike for the envisioned NGI such as smart (energy) grids, smart road transport infrastructure, smart cities, and e-health. This prediction will become reality unless fundamental changes in the approach to security of ICT-based and ICT-controlled infrastructures are taken.