New Critical Infrastructure Protection Strategies

Nowadays, critical infrastructures are more vulnerable to natural events, malicious physical and cyber-based attacks or intrusions. Since most societal functions rely heavily on critical infrastructures’ functionality, disturbances in any of them, can yield fatal consequences for interdependent infrastructures and subsequently, for the depending society. Therefore, critical infrastructure protection (CIP) has become an important research field in this century. In our country, to strengthen critical infrastructures and reduce the likelihood of willful attacks, possible vulnerabilities and negative consequences, it is imperative to consider the requirement of passive defense. Hence, critical infrastructure protection against any types of threats, as one of the goals of passive defense, would be achieved by developing and expanding appropriate strategies and guidelines. In this paper existing methodologies and national strategies for critical infrastructure protection is described. Resilience as a novel concept in common practices and strategies that have been applied in various countries to establish national protection plans, is investigated. In the concluding remarks, a set of strategic goals and also the most important challenges and requirements for developing critical infrastructure protection frameworks with a futuristic outlook are proposed. Thus, comparative research methodology is used to analyze the primary requirements of our national critical infrastructure protection strategy which could be counted as an effective step in achieving passive defense objectives.