syssec_red_book

25. The Dutch National Cyber Security Research AgendaICT and Internet could undermine its growth: it has been estimated thatincreased trust in Internet by consumers could provide an additional 1.4billion euro of online trade by 2014.Just as private individuals are concerned with privacy, companies areconcerned with their intellectual property and confidential information.Companies are faced with a rapid rise of ever more sophisticated cyberattacks aimed at corporate espionage.• Industrial Control Systems. SCADA (short for “Supervisory Controland Data Acquisition”) systems monitor and control large industrial establishments,such as chemical and nuclear plants, and large parts of thenational critical infrastructure, such as the water, gas and electricity supply.Disruptions in SCADA systems can have disastrous consequences,but their increasing reliance on ICT—including the Internet—has madethem vulnerable to remote attacks. Stuxnet is the most famous amongnumerous examples here. This is especially worrying as these systemsare attractive targets for hacktivism, cyber terrorism, and cyber war.Improving the resilience of the ICT-dependent critical infrastructurerequires research into these infrastructures as they exist today, to understandtheir interdependencies and judge their reliability in the faceof attacks, and research into more secure components (hardware, software,or communication protocols) that may be needed to build a secureinfrastructure.• Smart grid. A new piece of technical critical infrastructure very muchunder development today is the smart grid, the next-generation electricityand utilities network that uses ICT technology to provide two-way digitalcommunications between suppliers and appliances at consumers’ homes,including smart meters and in the near future also batteries in electriccars. Smart grids are being promoted as a way of addressing energyindependence, global warming and emergency resilience issues, but theincreased reliance on ICT also introduces new threats, to both the securityof the overall Grid and the privacy of individual users.• Finance. Financial institutions or their customers are increasingly oftenvictims of targeted cyberattacks, carried out by well-funded criminalorganizations, which are becoming ever more sophisticated. These attacksare costing millions to consumers, retailer, and financial institutions (e.g.,through skimming, stolen credit-card numbers, DoS attacks on paymentinfrastructure) and undermine the trust that is crucial for the financialsystem to operate.Present security solutions (firewalls, intrusion detection systems) cannotcope with this level of sophistication. There is a clear need for new148