With an extensive background in confronting sophisticated cyber threats within global corporations, Malik Haidar has a unique vantage point on the intersection of business strategy, intelligence, and security. His work focuses on fortifying the very systems that underpin our daily lives. In this discussion, we explore the stark realities of attacks on critical national infrastructure, moving beyond abstract warnings to detail the practical steps operators must take. We’ll delve into the cascading consequences of a successful breach, the challenges of implementing robust defenses in complex environments, and the cultural shift required to build true resilience against state-level threats.
Following the coordinated malware attacks on Poland’s energy infrastructure, what specific lessons should UK operators learn? Please detail the first three steps a provider should take to assess their own vulnerability to a similar, highly disruptive campaign.
The incident in Poland was a sobering reminder that these threats are not theoretical; they are active, coordinated, and aimed at the heart of a nation’s functioning. The primary lesson for any UK operator, whether in energy or transport, is that preparedness can no longer be a line item—it must be a core operational principle. The first step is to immediately intensify your threat monitoring. This isn’t just about watching alerts; it’s about actively hunting for anomalies in your network activity that mirror the tactics used in Poland. Second, you must rapidly increase your situational awareness. This means mapping out your most critical systems, especially Industrial Control Systems, and understanding precisely how they could be accessed or manipulated. The third, and most crucial, immediate step is to begin hardening defenses, starting with a rapid assessment of your most exposed vulnerabilities and prioritizing them for immediate patching.
Severe threats can aim to shut down operations or cause physical damage to systems. Can you walk us through a hypothetical scenario of such an attack on a national transportation network, detailing the cascading impacts and the key indicators of compromise?
Imagine a national rail network. An attacker’s initial entry might be silent, a subtle intrusion into the central signaling system. The first indicator wouldn’t be a crash, but something an operator might dismiss—minor, ghost-like glitches in the system, or unusual data flows at odd hours. The attacker’s goal is to learn the system before causing physical damage. Once they have control, they could manipulate signals, causing two trains to enter the same track section, or they could shut down power to a major hub during rush hour, stranding thousands. The cascading impact is immense: emergency services are gridlocked, economic activity halts, and public panic ensues. The ultimate aim isn’t just disruption; it’s to erode public trust in the state’s ability to provide basic, safe services, turning a cyber-attack into a national crisis.
Guidance for hardening defenses often includes patching vulnerabilities, applying multi-factor authentication, and using ‘secure by design’ principles. In your experience, which of these is most challenging for CNI operators to implement, and what metrics can they use to measure their effectiveness?
Without a doubt, patching is the most persistent and difficult challenge for CNI operators. While MFA and secure-by-design are crucial, they are often applied to newer systems. CNI is rife with legacy Industrial Control Systems that were built decades ago to last, not to be updated. You can’t simply take a power grid offline to apply a patch. The risk of disrupting an essential service during the update is often perceived as greater than the cyber risk itself. To measure effectiveness, operators need to move beyond simple patch counts. Key metrics should include ‘time-to-patch’ for critical vulnerabilities once they are identified and the percentage of critical assets that are fully compliant with the patching policy. Another vital metric is tracking the number of ‘unpatchable’ legacy systems and ensuring they have robust compensating controls, like network segmentation, around them.
Even with strong defenses, successful attacks are possible. Can you outline the essential components of a robust resilience and recovery plan for a telecommunications provider and share an example of how such a plan can drastically reduce the real-world impact of an incident?
For a telecom provider, resilience is everything. A strong plan has three core components. First, redundancy and failover systems that are not just duplicates, but are geographically and logically separate from the primary network. Second, a well-rehearsed incident response protocol that empowers teams to make decisions and isolate affected systems without waiting for layers of approval. The third, and often overlooked, component is a data recovery strategy designed to combat destructive malware aimed at erasing everything. For example, if an attacker uses malware to wipe the core routing databases, a good plan would involve activating isolated, air-gapped backups to restore service to critical customers like hospitals and emergency services within minutes, not days. This buys precious time to perform a full, clean recovery on the main network, drastically reducing the impact from a nationwide outage to a manageable, temporary disruption.
The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill is seen as a critical step in managing national vulnerability. Beyond simple compliance, how can this legislation change the day-to-day security culture within CNI organizations? Please provide a step-by-step approach for a leadership team.
Legislation like this is a powerful catalyst for cultural change, but only if leadership drives it beyond a simple checkbox exercise. The first step for a leadership team is to communicate the ‘why’ behind the bill, translating it from legal jargon into a clear message about protecting society and the business itself. Step two is to assign clear ownership and accountability, not just to the CISO, but to the operational heads of energy, water, or transport divisions. Security is their responsibility, too. Step three involves integrating security metrics into operational performance reviews. When uptime and safety metrics are discussed, so too should the status of critical patches and access controls. Finally, leadership must visibly champion and invest in regular, realistic drills that simulate severe attacks. When the CEO participates in a recovery exercise, it sends a powerful message that this is not just an IT problem, but a core business function.
What is your forecast for the evolution of cyber threats against critical national infrastructure over the next five years?
I believe we will see a significant shift from espionage and disruption towards genuinely destructive attacks. Adversaries are moving beyond just shutting things down temporarily; their goal will be to cause lasting, physical damage to systems that are difficult and expensive to replace, like custom-built components in our power grid or water treatment facilities. The line between cyber-attack and a physical act of aggression will become increasingly blurred. We will also see attackers leveraging AI to automate their reconnaissance and find vulnerabilities far faster than human teams can patch them. Consequently, defenders will need to pivot from a purely preventative posture to one of assumed breach, focusing relentlessly on resilience and the ability to operate through an attack and recover at speed. The next five years will be about surviving the hit, not just trying to block it.
