Analysis and recommendations for network and communication security for mission critical infrastructure

Abstract

The criticality of maintaining a complete degree of secrecy for any critical infrastructure based communication is a must. The seriousness of the requirement ensures success in terms of financial and competitive gains. Such critical infrastructure can be closely related to the one used by the armed forces for their operational objectives. Defense forces of developed country are more rapidly moving towards a unified solution that will take care of the network and the communication security, thus ensuring interoperable modules between different plethora of equipment. However the same solution may not be apt for armies of developing countries. These developing countries use equipment whose profile are spread over decades of manufacturing. In addition, the countries in which communication and network devices have been developed are different with varied optimum operational parameters. Whereas a complete overhaul of network and communication equipment, aligning to all modern security standards is desired, the same may not be feasible for the economics of developing countries. This paper tries to analyze the network and communication security requirements of a critical infrastructure, as in case of armed forces, of a developing country. We also bring out the possible recommendations under the economic and vintage equipment profile constraints.