The importance of CIE in the digital eraAWARENESS DECKBY: RICARDO MANUEL BAIAO JORGE DE ALMEIDA

WHAT IS CIE?IMPACT ON SOCIETY

RISKS

CONCLUSIONS

What is CIE?

The principal scopes of practice for CIE are:

• Planning and design of trusted communication networks• Operational oversight of trusted communication networks • Risk analysis of, and contingency planning for, network

infrastructure

Communications Infrastructure Engineering (CIE) is related to the design and operation of the electronic networks that support all types of data communications.

CIE looks after the data in transit and is primarily focused on the reliability, availability, security, and privacy of networks, called Trusted Network, rather than on their physical aspects (such as cabling, Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, 5G, transmission and receiving devices, etc.)

The essential activity of CIE is the system-level design and management of secure or trusted communications networks.

WHAT IS CIE?

IMPACT ON SOCIETYRISKS

CONCLUSIONS

Impact on Society

With the massive growth of Digital Infrastructure to cover the rapid expansion of wireless communications devices such as iPhone™, Android™ platforms, Windows Mobile™, and the rapid grow of 24/7 online services such as banking, bill payment, and information services, users are becoming heavily dependent of digital infrastructure.

The Digital era is here to stay, the IoT (Internet of Things) is taking its first steps and it will certainly change our lives in the future. All organisations want to be part of the day-to-day lives of their target audience and to take advantage of that presence to conduct business. That´s why organisations all over the world are investing heavily in digital transformation with the support of governments and public institutions such as the European Commission.

As a matter of fact, the European Commission has recently announced its plans to help industry, SMEs, researchers and European public authorities to take full advantage of new technologies. The plans include, among other things, an investment of over 50,000 million dollars to help digitize the industry.

Impact on SocietyPersonal communications is only the tip of the iceberg — other critical infrastructures (operational infrastructures) are also dependent upon digital infrastructure.

• Electric power, natural gas, oil production, and transmission systemsEnergy and Utilities• Telecommunications, broadcasting systems, software, hardware, and

networks, including the InternetCommunications and

Information Technology• Banking, investment, securities, payment processingFinance• Hospitals and other health care facilities, blood supply, laboratories,

pharmaceuticalsHealthcare

• Production, processing, distribution and safetyFood

• Drinking water and wastewater treatment / managementWater

• Aviation, rail, marine, road, mass transitTransport

• Law enforcement, fire, search and rescue, emergency servicesSafety

• Social services, regulationGovernment

• Defence, industrial base, chemical industryManufacturing

Impact on Society

Operational Technology (OT) rely entirely in digital infrastructures and consist of platforms

used in running the operation of physical assets of enterprises, especially those that involve

taking specific actions. (e.g. controlling electricity or energy flow,

valves, lighting, ambient environment, machine tools or robots).

Also Internet of Things (IoT) rely entirely on digital infrastructures, and consists of a network

of dedicated physical objects (things), that contain embedded technology to sense or

interact with its internal state or the external environment.

The IoT is an ecosystem that includes things, communication, applications and data analysis

Impact on Society

It is easy to see the dependence of sectors like Finance (where virtually all transactions are automated), Public Safety (Emergency and Security) ecommerce (Amazon, Google, Facebook) on digital infrastructure.

But most people don´t realize that water and sewage pumping stations are monitored and controlled remotely using wireless communication links, as are railway and underground trains and even our electric power grid including nuclear facilities. These essential services can be compromised by unavailability of the digital infrastructure on which they depend.

Modern manufacturing is dependent upon automated supply chains and production control applications, which in turn rely on digital infrastructure. A failure in that digital infrastructure can shut down a production line, with attendant losses in the millions of dollars per day. It can also adversely affect worker safety.

This is the present, the future is much more ambitious.

ENTERPRISE

Impact on Society

Internet of ThingsCONSUMER

Back-end IT systems Predictive maintenance

analytics

M2M connectivity (Machine to Machine communication services)

Processor for monitoring and control of things

Jet engine Robot ATM

Mobile apps Elderly person

monitoring service

Home Broadband Standard mobile data

Smartphone gateway Wireless router

Baby monitor Health and fitness

monitor

Applications and Analytics

Connectivity

Gateway / Controller

Things

Operational Technology

Source: Gartner

Relationship between OT and IoT at Enterprise and consumer level.

WHAT IS CIE?

IMPACT ON SOCIETY

RISKSCONCLUSIONS

Risks• Risks to society associated with our dependence on Digital Infrastructure• The Major risks are:

Unavailability • no food, water, police / fire / ambulance service, medicine, access to information, financial services, transportation, etc.

Compromise• contaminated food or water, monetary fraud or theft,

identity theft, trains / planes / vessels colliding or crashing, etc.

• Threats to digital infrastructure can be either unintentional (hardware and/or software failures, lack of redundancy or fault tolerance, consequences of other exogenous events such as fires, floods, earthquakes, power blackouts, wars, etc.) or intentional (hacking, phishing, denial of service attacks, identity theft, fraud, espionage, etc. directed towards the network itself.)

• While our digital infrastructure is far from immune to unintentional threats, concern is growing about the threats of deliberate criminal activity perpetrated for financial gain.

RisksWhat is happening to the digital infrastructure today?• Every day one can read news items related to cyber abuse: • The theft of customer data from Sony’s online gaming service, forcing shutdown of the service• Foreign spies penetrating government systems, forcing the governments to disconnect from

the Internet • Industrial/commercial espionage conducted to give the perpetrators unfair competitive

advantage• Denial-of-service attacks against popular websites; and so on.

• At a personal level, most of us have received scam email designed to defraud us or to trick us into disclosing account numbers and passwords (known in the cyber security industry as phishing). And many of us have experienced the infection of our personal computers with spyware designed to capture and report our online activities to others, or some form of malware, such as a worm or a virus designed to render the computer inoperable and/or its data unusable.

• These abuses are all predicated on the unrestricted connectivity provided by the internet.

WHAT IS CIE?

IMPACT ON SOCIETY

RISKS

CONCLUSIONS

Conclusions• Engineers have always been at the forefront of innovation and exploitation of technology,

so it is no surprise that many of them have turned their skills to the challenge of building and maintaining trusted network facilities.

• Thus far, most have acquired the special technical skills necessary to do this work on the job. Only recently have accredited engineering programmes started to emerge that focus on this area of professional practice.

• “CIE” needs to mature in order to be recognized as an engineering discipline. Improving CIE practice standards within industry and government, collaborating with other stakeholders, and shaping future legislation and regulations will help to contribute to solving the world’s cyber-security crisis.

• This is an area that needs development, and needs to be fully regulated.

ConclusionsRecently the European Commission proposed concrete measures to accelerate the setting of standards within the Digital Single Market strategy: Focus on 5 priority areas, by requesting the industry and standardisation bodies to

develop standards in the following areas: 5G Cloud computing Internet of things Data technologies Cybersecurity

Co-financing testing and experimentation technologies to accelerate the establishment of standards, including public-private partnerships; thus, the timely development of standards will be guaranteed to drive innovation and growth of enterprises.

References:http://www.gartner.comhttp://www.peo.on.ca/https://www.ic.gc.cahttp://ec.europa.eu/priorities/digital-single-market_en