Milk or Wine: Are Critical Infrastructure Protection Architectures Improving with Age?

Abstract

This paper contextualizes the nature of threats to critical infrastructure, especially vulnerabilities within electric grid systems, and analyzes key considerations for the protection architecture of such systems. By exploring historical case studies, we demonstrate the potential for blind spots in infrastructure protection policy, which can leave electric grids vulnerable to a variety of threats, including improvisational malignant devices. These devices in turn have the potential to catalyze cascading failure scenarios within interdependent critical infrastructure systems, constituting “wicked problems” of complexity that bear relevance to a variety of public and private institutions responsible for the provision of essential services.