This paper explores the relationship between physical and cyber infrastructures, focusing on how threats and disruptions in physical infrastructures can cascade into failures in the cyber infrastructure. It also examines the challenges involved in organizing and managing massive amounts of critical infrastructure data that are geographically and logically disparate. To address these challenges, we have designed Cascade, a system for visualizing the cascading effects of physical infrastructure failures into the cyber infrastructure. Cascade provides situational awareness and shows how threats to physical infrastructures such as power, transportation and communications can affect the networked enterprises comprising the cyber infrastructure. Our approach applies the concept of punctualization from Actor-Network Theory as an organizing principle for disparate infrastructure data. In particular, the approach exposes the critical relationships between physical and cyber infrastructures, and enables infrastructure data to be depicted visually to maximize comprehension during disaster planning and crisis response activities.
Keywords: Cyber infrastructure, infrastructure dependencies, cascading failures, actor-network theory, situational awareness
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
D. Dudenhoeffer, M. Permann and M. Manic, CIMS: A framework for infrastructure interdependency modeling and analysis, Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, pp. 478-485, 2006.
E. Eidswick, Montana spatial data infrastructure: Enhancing an all- hazards approach to emergency preparedness, Proceedings of the ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit, 2006.
J. Goldstein, Emergence as a construct: History and issues, Emergence, vol. 1(1), pp. 49-72, 1999.
V. Kumar, J. Srivastava and A. Lazarevic (Eds. ), Managing Cyber Threats: Issues, Approaches and Challenges, Springer, New York, 2005.
G. Lamm and Y. Haimes, Assessing and managing risks to information assurance: A methodological approach, Systems Engineering, vol. 5(4), pp. 286-314, 2002.
B. Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2005.
J. Law, Notes on the theory of actor-network: Ordering, strategy and het- erogeneity, Systems Practice and Action Research, vol. 5(4), pp. 379-393, 1992.
J. Law, Ladbroke Grove, or how to think about failing systems, Technical Report, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom, 2000.
J. Law, Disasters, a/symmetries and interferences, Technical Report, Lan- caster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom, 2003.
T. Longstaff, C. Chittister, R. Pethia and Y. Haimes, Are we forgetting the risks of information technology? IEEE Computer, vol. 33(12), pp. 43-51, 2000.
T. Malone and K. Crowston, The interdisciplinary study of coordination, ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 26(1), pp. 87-119, 1991.
New York State, Geographic Information Systems Clearinghouse (www.nysgis. state. ny. us).
P. Pederson, D. Dudenhoeffer, S. Hartley and M. Perman, Critical Infrastructure Interdependency Modeling: A Survey of U. S. and International Research, Technical Report INL/EXT-06-11464, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, Idaho, 2006.
C. Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1999.
S. Rinaldi, J. Peerenboom and T. Kelly, Identifying, understanding and analyzing critical infrastructure interdependencies, IEEE Control Systems, vol. 21(6), pp. 11-25, 2001.
C. Robinson, J. Woodward and S. Varnado, Critical infrastructure: Inter- linked and vulnerable, Issues in Science and Technology, vol. 15(1), pp. 61-67, 1998.
U. S. Department of Homeland Security, National Infrastructure Protection Plan, Washington, DC (www.dhs.gov/nipp ), 2006.
R. Zimmerman, Decision-making and the vulnerability of interdependent critical infrastructure, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, vol. 5, pp. 4059-4063, 2004.
R. Zimmerman, Critical infrastructure and interdependency, in The McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook, D. Kamien (Ed. ), McGraw- Hill, New York, pp. 523-545, 2006.
R. Zimmerman and C. Restrepo, The next step: Quantifying infrastructure interdependencies to improve security, International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, vol. 2(2-3), pp. 215-230, 2006.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kopylec, J., D'Amico, A., Goodall, J. (2008). Visualizing Cascading Failures in Critical Cyber Infrastructures. In: Goetz, E., Shenoi, S. (eds) Critical Infrastructure Protection. ICCIP 2007. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, vol 253. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-75462-8_25
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-75462-8_25
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-75461-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-75462-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)