Critical Infrastructures You Can Trust: Where Telecommunications Fits

3 INTRODUCTION The security of our nation, the viability of our economy, and the health and well being of our citizens rely today on infrastructures for communication, finance, energy distribution, and transportation. All of these infrastructures depend increasingly on networked information systems. That dependence, with its new levels and kinds of vulnerabilities, is attracting growing attention from government and industry. Within the last two years, the White House Office of Science Board, and the General Accounting Office have each issued reports on the vulnerabilities of networked information systems. 4 Congressional hearings, 5 articles in the popular press, and concern about the impending year 2000 problem have further heightened public awareness. Most recently, Presidential Decision Directive 63 6 has called for a national effort to assure the security of our increasingly vulnerable critical infrastructures. Networked information systems (NISs) integrate computing systems, communications systems, and people (both as users and operators). The defining elements are interfaces to other systems along with algorithms to coordinate those systems. Economics dictates the use of commercial off the shelf (COTS) components wherever possible, which means that developers of an NIS have neither control nor detailed information about many system components.