The Institute for Critical Infrastructure (ICIT) recently released their Digital Consolidation Task Force Report, a collaboration with CyberRisk Alliance, highlighting solutions for addressing the challenges of digital consolidation. Although the digital world has brought incredible changes to society, such as enabling progress and enhancing lives, centralizing critical digital functions within a few companies has made it easier for malicious actors to identify valuable targets, leading to the potential for widespread digital disruption.
In this report, the ICIT presents the “4-R” framework to build resilience and mitigate risk:
- Resourcing: Increasing government investment to strengthen digital infrastructure.
- Recovery: Creating effective plans to quickly restore operations after disruptions.
- Rehearsing: Testing recovery plans through collaboration between the public and private sectors.
- Response: Creating and enforcing clear response policies to protect critical systems from digital disruption.
The ICIT emphasizes the importance of the 4-Rs as a method for ensuring the digital domain can endure and recover from the disruptions that bad actors are determined to inflict. These four pillars work together to enhance the resilience of critical digital systems, ensuring they are better equipped to minimize disruptions, and support national security in an increasingly connected world.
A closer partnership between public and private sectors is essential to building stronger, more resilient digitally consolidated infrastructure. Working together will ensure that systems remain secure and adaptable to changing threats. Lastly, the report highlights that securing the digital landscape will not only protect the nation’s digital ecosystem and reduce societal risks, but also preserve the U.S.’s position as a global leader.
For more information, check out the HSDL’s In-Focus topics on Cyber Policy and Cyber Threat Actors.
