The Economics of Critical Infrastructure Controls Systems’ Cyber Security

This paper studies some of the economic concepts constraining the acceleration of the necessary cybersecurity improvements for critical infrastructure industrial control systems. Industrial control systems are used in several critical infrastructure sectors to include energy, transportation, manufacturing, and water utilities. Critical infrastructures support public health and life safety, economic vitality, national defense, and overarching societal well-being. Significant damage or disruptions to a critical infrastructure could result in potentially catastrophic and cascading consequences.Outcomes of this study are the identification of the economic constraints on improving cybersecurity for a state's critical infrastructure control systems. This paper recommends that accelerating cyber-security improvements will require addressing economic constraints that will require policy/regulatory and bid specification changes as well as initiating cyber cooperative efforts between the state's smaller critical infrastructure companies.