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“Recent high profile ‘incidents’ on critical national infrastructure such as the one against the US Dam, and the Ukraine power facility have highlighted the need to perform operational activities at a heightened level. The Ukraine incident demonstrated the capabilities of those who seek to disrupt a countries core capability can do so by targeting key industries. The recent indictment of seven hackers associated with the Iranian government marks a significant landmark in identifying these attackers and bringing justice to those who are affected. Testing the capabilities of a nation against possible attackers is welcomed by those who understand the risk involved by nation state attacks.

“Historic attacks such as Stuxnet and Duqu have demonstrated the potential damage that can be caused to ICS, or Control & Data acquisition systems. A grasp of would be hacker targets is more a concern in relation to ‘ why’ the UK would be a target to ‘nation state’ hackers. The ongoing unrest in Europe and the rising attacks from militant groups should raise concerns sufficiently of the potential of attacks which could target national infrastructure as we observed last week in Brussels at the Nuclear research facility. Historic attacks are believed to have been successful in traditional terms, such as ’offline attacks’ but have yet to have any high operational success in terms of targeting CPNI at a ‘cyber’ level. The regular exercises in this area will strengthen the national posture on resilience in the face of an emerging and persistent threat.”