Commonality Practices for National Infrastructure Protection

Commonality Practices for National Infrastructure Protection

Introduction

Commonality refers to specific aspects and features that are common in most areas of protecting national infrastructure against attacks. Commonality encompasses various security protocols, regulations, standards, and best practices, such as auditing. Auditing for national infrastructure should be meaningful and objective. There are many common standards and practices related to the security of the national infrastructure. They include the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, Federal Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). Other standards include payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT), and ETSI/IEC 27000 Standard family (ISO27K). These standards are done to enhance the security and safety of national infrastructure.

Commonality Practices for National Infrastructure Protection

The driving factors in most national infrastructure protection strategies are the success and general security of enterprises. The HIPAA act was developed to protect both the patients against attacks. There have several cases of loss of patient’s information and data in health facilities. As a result, it has compromised the privacy and confidentiality of the patient’s sensitive data. The HIPAA act regulates the gathering, storage, processing, analysis, and use of patients’ health information (Berwick & Gaines, 2018). Besides, the act protects and protect health workers against exploitation by their respective employers. Many health facilities across the US use the HIPAA act.

The NSIT cybersecurity framework offers security for organizations against cyber-attacks. The NIST cybersecurity framework provides organizations with a risk-based approach to identifying and managing cyber-attacks (Shackelford, Proia, Martell, & Craig, 2015). The framework continues to be reviewed so that it can cater to new attacks as a result of the advancing technology. The COBIT framework is a comprehensive approach to securing information and technology operations in organizations. With the framework in place, organizations can efficiently conduct their operations in since the risks and attacks have minimal chances of occurring.

Benefits of Commonality

Through common standards, organizations can closely monitor the safety of machines, operating procedures, and infrastructure. Standard operating procedures and configurations ensures the continuity of the business. Operations continues in the organizations even if a certain employee is absent. The standards procedures minimize errors in each department in the organization. It also supports consistent and reliable services and products. Besides, standard operating procedures provides an amble environment that enhance timely problem-solving. Commonality provides organizations with maximum resilience against risks and attacks.

Challenges

Though commonality is desired in organizations, it faces various challenges. It is not possible to educate and involve all stakeholders on the significance of commonality as a security approach. Failure of involving all decision makers results in incompetence in organizations. Commonality may fail to capture the specific needs of various departments in organizations hence it might not successfully address the security issues. Additionally, the practices and standards requires periodic review and update to effectively cater for the new risks and attacks.

Conclusion

Commonality acts as a safe ground for all organizations. It address security concerns in a comprehensive manner. Developers should ensure the standards are revised and reviewed to meet the current technological needs in organizations. In conclusion, the afore-mentioned best practices are vital in streamlining operations and maintaining security of the infrastructure.

References

Amoroso, E. (2012). Cyber-attacks: Protecting national infrastructure.

Griffin, B. N., Lepsch, R., Martin, J., Howard, R., Rucker, M., Zapata, E., & Nerren, P. (2015). Small habitat commonality reduces the cost for human mars missions.

Guariniello, C., & DeLaurentis, D. (2014, January). Communications, Information, and Cyber Security in Systems-of-Systems: Assessing the Impact of Attacks through Interdependency Analysis. In CSER (pp. 720-727).

Ibrahim, A., Valli, C., McAteer, I., & Chaudhry, J. (2018). A security review of local government using NIST CSF:  A case study. The Journal of Supercomputing, 74(10), 5171-5186.

Mesa, B. H., & Andry, J. F. (2018). Evaluation of information system effectiveness level using COBIT Framework 5. CogITo Smart Journal, 4(1), 148-159.

Shackelford, S. J., Proia, A. A., Martell, B., & Craig, A. N. (2015). Toward a global cybersecurity standard of care: Exploring the implications of the 2014 NIST cybersecurity framework on shaping reasonable national and international cybersecurity practices. Tex. Int’l LJ, 50, 305.

Shen, Lei. (2014). The NIST cybersecurity framework: Overview and potential impacts. Journal of Internet Law, 18(6), 3-6.