Summary Bullets:

• Geopolitical conflicts are forcing providers of critical national infrastructure to revisit and double down on the securing of supply chain to reduce operational risks and improve auditability.

• This is forcing businesses to unify cyber security with enterprise-wide operational resiliency. This is both the highest priority and greatest challenge.

In times of war, a rise of nationalism, global tariffs, and market volatility, mixed in with unhealthy doses of geopolitical tensions, state-assisted cyber-attacks targeting critical national infrastructure (CNI) are on the rise. Unlike other sectors, CNI are the core systems that underpin the functioning or delivery of essential services. CNI is also vital for the running of the economy. Major sectors such as transportation, utilities (e.g., energy, water), banking, health care, government services, telecoms, etc. fall within this group. While these sectors have always been required to guarantee confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information crucial to their operations at a higher standard compared to other sectors, it is the supply chain which is the weakest link. This has the greatest number of threat vectors from brute-force attacks, exploitation of software vulnerabilities to various strains of malware and ransomware attacks happens here.