COVID-19 and Threats to Critical Infrastructure

COVID-19 and Threats to Critical Infrastructure

April 2, 2020 | Expert Insights

Unlike non-traditional security threats like natural disasters, technological failures, and other disruptions, planning for a pandemic requires a different set of skills as well as certain continuity assumptions. A pandemic usually diffuses geographically and could appear in a flutter that can persist for several months. Due to the boundless nature of a pandemic, resources cannot easily be altered topographically to help an area in need, as in the case of other crises.

It is important for critical sectors and governments to work seamlessly to ensure that they can deliver essential goods and services while responding to a pandemic. Critical infrastructure such as health care and electric power will bear the additional onus to assist a contagion.

Critical Infrastructure entities could feel the aftermath of a pandemic much like any other business. It is estimated that up to 40 percent of a company’s employees could be absent sick, quarantined, or might stay home to care for ailing family members. Vendors and suppliers that critical infrastructure companies rely upon could experience similar personnel shortages.

Given the protracted impact of a pandemic, it would be difficult for organizations to depend on mutual assistance program that normally help utilities restore service after natural disasters.

Coronavirus 2019 and Spanish Flu 1918

It would appear that we are now facing an infection (COVID-19) that has the same epidemic characteristics as the 1918 influenza.

While the fundamental trait of Spanish Influenzaand COVID-19 are different, the best available index on the proclivity of the virus to infect, referred to as the reproduction number (R0) is comparable to that of the 1918 influenza. An R0 for a virulent malady is generally intoned as a single numeric value and is interpreted as follows: an epidemic is expected to progress if the R-value >1 and will terminate if R0 is less than 1. It would be reasonable to assume that an R0 less than 1 would attenuate the virus faster and render it ineffective.

Absenteeism and cross dependencies

The outcome of a COVID-19 pandemic will depend predominantly on the extent of absenteeism, the degree of know-how required to maintain utilities and the proportion of the community that can be trained and rallied into action as required. Statistical estimates attributable to seasonal and pandemic influenza from the Canadian Labour Force concluded that absenteeism rates were approximated at 12 percent for seasonal influenza between 1997-98 to 2008-09 and 13% percent for the two H1N1 pandemic waves. It is now predicted that the corresponding rate for COVID-19 could be as high as 20 - 50%.

In the past 100 years, there have been significant advances in the complexity, architecture and the interdependency of our critical utilities. Before electricity generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption operated in silos, functioned at different frequencies and were often confined to cities and immediate suburbs. For example, the interdependency of goods and services i.e. water, electricity and power, transportation and shipping, communication, fire and emergency services, food and agriculture and public safety with the health care sector is critical. While the interdependency of the first five parameters are obvious, food and agriculture is the safety net for inpatients and public safety provides for patient transport and triage assistance.

Today electrical power grids are highly unified and operate at a single frequency. To compound further, there are major cross-sector interdependencies like the indeed of the energy sector to power equipment operation, the chemical sector to provide required materials to treat water supply and the transportation sector to deliver critical supplies from the chemical sector.

A paradigm shift in the last one hundred years has been the privatization of utilities following government deregulation This has ensured that commercial companies now operate under different protocols of budgeting, coverage, upkeep, monetary, and continuity of operation plans. This often stifles government because now it can only strongly advocate a course of action rather than stipulate a course of action to be taken.

Many infrastructure sectors today require a high level of proficiency, such as adeptness in information technology, machine learning, robotics, communication skills, pharmaceutical specialist, additive manufacturing, etc. The challenge often is that there is a relatively small population that can execute these functions through years of schooling, training, and on-the-job experience decisive to perform well and securely.

Industrial sectors tend to react differently to high absenteeism dependant on the skills sets required. However, effective planning of a unified private-sector response will be arduous, if not futile, during a potential COVID-19 pandemic.

Cyber vulnerability to CI during Pandemics

In a pandemic, governments need to be extremely vigilant about cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure. A point to note is that terrorists and hostile nations are already looking to leverage more than one attack vector at a time. A cyber-attack at the time of any natural or man-made disaster becomes far more crippling and exponentially increases the impact than any single event.

For instance, if a hostile group was to attack the power grids of a nation during a pandemic, the emergency response would be hampered to the point of damaging the overall effectiveness of the counter-strategy. This is the catalyst for a perfect storm. With an antiquated infrastructure, adversaries will find a larger and more pliable surface area conducive for a cyber-attack. A targeted attack on the electricity supply of any major electric grid for 48 hours can cause inconsistencies in the supply of potable water in any major city in the subcontinent.

Author: Tobby Simon, Founder and President, Synergia Foundation