Editor’s Note: The NIST-disseminated background/overview document “Situational Awareness a New Way to Attack Cybersecurity Issues Rather Than Using a System Defense Approach” is attached here. The following is from the introduction.
Situational Awareness
The United States Army Field Manual defines “Situational Awareness” as “Knowledge and understanding of the current situation which promotes timely, relevant and accurate assessment of friendly, enemy and other operations within the battle space in order to facilitate decision making.”
What does “Situational Awareness” mean to utilities cybersecurity and critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR)?
The answer is
1) Accurate awareness of a utilities cybersecurity network and the CIKR that is a part of that network.
2) Complete understanding of the utilities cybersecurity operations and the individual CIKR that contribute to the overall process of the utilities system.
3) Proper assessment of the current operations occurring within the utilities cybersecurity network and the ability to assess potential breakdowns, weak areas or vulnerabilities that can be exploited to maximum effect in crippling a utilities system.
4) Monitoring of unusual events or occurrences within the cybersecurity network.
5) Flexibility to approach possible threats and mitigate them before they can be successful.
Situational Awareness is important due the complexity of operation in the modern utility system. However, in the case of cybersecurity the fluidity of change that occurs within the cybersecurity network evolves along an exponential rate that far outpaces other areas of a utilities grid. It is therefore essential that a utility and the industry have a unified approach to Cybersecurity and CIKR.
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