CYBER SECURITY IN THE PROTECTION OF ELECTRICAL CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURES

Abstract

Cybersecurity in critical infrastructures poses a challenge for any organization that owns them in the face of the incessant increase in cyberattacks around the world. In a technological reality such as the current one, in which the physical and logical domains are increasingly interdependent, this task is even more necessary since actions in either of these areas can have devastating consequences in both. Even more important in the case of critical infrastructures linked to the energy sector, since the rest of the vital services that a nation has depends on its proper functioning. Current Cuban regulations on cybersecurity and physical protection guarantee, up to a point, the protection of these infrastructures, but there is a lot of legislative dispersion in this regard, as there is no specific legal norm with this objective, in accordance with current international standards and in relationship with the Cuban reality. The design of the measures to be adopted for the protection of critical infrastructures must provide a stepped approach, allowing the detection of the attack in each of its phases and the delay or elimination of the threat in the shortest possible time. For this, it is necessary to use defense-in-depth schemes with staggered and non-dependent damage control and mitigation actions. Actions must be implemented to ensure the resilience of industrial control systems as well as their fault tolerance.