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When lifelines go digital, cyber risk converges
Five moves critical infrastructure leaders can make to shore up cyber resilience
10-MINUTE READ
March 15, 2026
Critical infrastructure, including energy, water, healthcare, transportation and communications, powers nations and modern life. As these sectors digitize and interconnect, they unlock new efficiencies but also expose themselves to a rapidly evolving threat landscape.
Recent examples show what’s at stake
A US auto dealership software provider paid an estimated $25 million in ransom after a cyberattack forced systems to shut down, disrupting inventory, service and sales. A Northern European water utility switched to manual control following an operational technology (OT) breach. Several of Europe’s largest airports faced multi-day disruptions and cancellations due to a ransomware attack on check-in systems. Each incident disrupted vital services, demonstrating how operational resilience increasingly underpins societal stability.
The convergence of IT and OT systems, the rise of AI-powered attacks and increasingly complex digital ecosystems are expanding the attack surface faster than traditional defenses can adapt.
Fifty-three percent of critical infrastructure executives cite gen AI-powered attacks as a top concern, while a third specifically worry about deepfakes. Over 80% think fast innovation and complex systems are risky. 1
Securing these lifelines is no longer just a technical issue. It’s a national, economic and societal imperative. When critical systems fail, disruption ripples through supply chains, markets and essential services, impacting millions of people and costing billions of dollars.
CYBER RISK
What's at stake?
$25M
A US auto dealership software provider paid an estimated $25 million in ransom after a cyberattack forced systems to shut down.
Over 80%
consider fast innovation and complex systems risky.
Real-world consequences: cyber incidents that stop services
The threat landscape is intensifying across three dimensions:
- Geopolitical and external threats — Nation-state and state-aligned actors increasingly target infrastructure for strategic leverage. A recent report found that ransomware attacks on critical industries saw a 34% year-over-year increase in 2025, and 50% of global incidents struck essentials sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, energy, transportation and finance. 2
- Technology and operational risk — Legacy OT systems were never designed for connectivity, creating blind spots in converged environments. In a recent Forrester study, 91% of OT decision-makers reported that their infrastructure had been breached or failed in the past 18 months; 51% reported service interruption, 49% revenue loss and 53% reputational damage. 3
- Organizational and regulatory pressure — Mandates such as SOCI, NIS2 and NSM-22 are accelerating the need for cyber maturity even as resources and talent remain constrained.
Resilience alone is no longer enough. Organizations must define their Minimum Viable Business (MVB): the essential operations that must continue to prevent cascading failures, protect safety and preserve confidence during crisis.
The illusion of control
After years of investment in firewalls and compliance frameworks, many organizations face a new reality: attackers are no longer breaking in—they’re logging in.
Compromised credentials, misconfigured cloud systems and fragmented visibility across IT and OT sites are silent enablers of cyberattacks. Threat actors exploit legitimate identities and third-party connections to move undetected through networks.
98% of organizations have a relationship with a third party that has been breached. 4
Cloud platforms, IoT devices, edge systems and machine identities continue to expand the entry points adversaries can use. And while compliance helps, regulations can’t evolve as fast as the threat environment.
At the same time, the cyber talent gap widens. Eighty-four percent of organizations cite it as a critical risk, and only 17% have fully implemented comprehensive third-party risk programs—leaving gaps in monitoring, detection and response. 5
CYBERATTACKS
Where do identity gaps and talent shortages leave you exposed?
98%
of organizations have a relationship with a third party that has been breached.
84%
of organizations cite the cyber skills gap as a critical risk.
Adaptive security: From static defenses to operational preparedness
To thrive in this new environment, critical-infrastructure operators must move beyond traditional resilience toward adaptive security architectures that anticipate, absorb and recover from disruption at speed and scale.
This means shifting from static defense to dynamic, intelligence-driven security, powered by collaboration, automation and continuous improvement.
Five moves to redefine the blueprint for resilient operations
For critical infrastructure, cybersecurity failures are not IT events—they are public safety, continuity-of-service and regulatory compliance concerns. Boards and executive leadership must govern cyber risk with the same rigor as health and safety, asset integrity and operational risk. This includes clear executive accountability, defined crisis decision roles and routine board-level exercises based on service-disrupting cyber scenarios, not abstract threat briefings.
2X
Organizations with board oversight are 2X more likely to demonstrate a strong cyber posture. 6
Critical infrastructure operators cannot protect what they cannot see. Fragmented visibility across IT, OT and remote sites delays detection and increases the risk of uncontrolled outages. Operators should establish centralized security operations, unified asset inventories and common governance spanning corporate, operational and safety-related systems to enable early detection and coordinated response.
Only 11%
of organizations have deployed OT-asset discovery or monitoring technologies 7—highlighting a risk visibility gap for critical environments.
Cyber incidents must never force unsafe operating conditions for critical infrastructure. Resilience must be embedded into the physical system itself, not bolted on through IT controls. This includes failsafe-by-design principles, clear separation between safety and control systems, manual override capabilities and pre-approved degraded operating modes. Cyber scenarios should be embraced alongside process safety, emergency response, environmental impact and regulatory reporting, ensuring that cyber threats do not compromise safe operation or public trust.
83%
of companies find it challenging to design and operationalize cyber risk strategies to accelerate transformations and build customer trust.8
Critical services rely on deeply interconnected vendors, integrators, OEMs and managed service providers. If one supplier is compromised, the impact can cascade across multiple operators and regions. Cyber resilience requires risk-based third-party management, aligned to operational criticality, with continuous access monitoring, resilience obligations embedded in contracts and coordinated incident response across the ecosystem.
3.4X
Organizations with mature cyber programs are 3.4X more likely to manage vendor risk comprehensively.9
For critical infrastructure, resilience is defined by how quickly essential services can be safely restored, not whether an intrusion has occurred. Operators must adopt recovery-by-design principles, including tested playbooks, cross-functional simulations and clearly defined recovery objectives for critical services.
82%
of organizations struggle with resilience,10 highlighting a need to switch from prevention-centric to recovery readiness models.
Collaboration at scale
Critical Infrastructure operators are part of a national resilience system, where cyber incidents can escalate into public safety, economic or national security events.
Effective resilience depends on public-private coordination at speed and scale—including trusted intelligence sharing, pre-defined escalation paths to national authorities and aligned crisis-management protocols. Operators must be able to collaborate seamlessly with regulators, suppliers, emergency services and national cyber response bodies during service-impacting incidents.
The MVB provides a shared operational language for this collaboration. By defining which services must be sustained or safely restored, organizations can align recovery priorities, coordinate cross-sector response and enable faster, more coherent national-level decision-making during crisis.
Accountability at the top: What C-suite leaders should be asking now
- Do our boards and operational leaders have clear accountability for cyber resilience across the enterprise and ecosystem?
- How resilient is our IT and OT environment, and what is our MVB in the event of a breach?
- Do we have unified visibility across IT and OT systems for all remote sites?
- Are we collaborating effectively with partners to manage shared risk?
- Are our cyber investments aligned with national priorities and evolving regulations?
Rebuilding public trust through measurable continuity
Securing critical infrastructure is no longer about defending perimeters; it’s about preserving trust in the systems that sustain daily life.
As digital transformation accelerates, organizations must prioritize resilience while also enabling reinvention, which starts with protecting the operations that matter most.
By combining data, AI and human expertise, critical infrastructure leaders can modernize defenses, secure innovation and build systems that not only withstand disruption but emerge stronger from it.
Sources
1 5 6 7 8 9 10 Accenture Cyber Readiness for Critical Infrastructure survey of global C-suite executives, October-December 2024. N=1,985.
2 Escalating Ransomware Threats to National Security, KELA, October 21, 2025.
3 Forrester Opportunity Snapshot: A custom study commissioned by Schneider Electric, June 2025.
4 SecurityScorecard Third-Party Breach Report Reveals Software Supply Chain as Top Target for Ransomware Groups, February 28, 2024.