Cyber Security Attacks: Common Vulnerabilities in the Critical Infrastructure

ABSTRACT The future of the digital economy relies upon the ability of cybersecurity technical solution with non-technical areas working in tandem with business units, executives, providers, and end-users to prevent any cyberattacks. In the recent many years there are multiple targeted cyberattacks carried against the critical infrastructures of a digital economy across the world. These cyberattacks have resulted in permanent or long term damage to the critical infrastructure and there is steady rise in the cyber and physical security related events that continue to raise the concerns. In this paper the attempt is made to identify the vulnerabilities that exist in the critical infrastructure that are exploited by the attacker to carry out a successful attack. The paper identifies software security vulnerabilities, poorly design networks, weak configuration vulnerabilities as a major vulnerabilities that are exploited to carry out successful attacks on the critical infrastructures. The paper identified nontechnical vulnerabilities such as talent gap, budget constraints, lack of management priority and weak cyber security mechanism across various regions for a multi-national business that is spread across the globe as common vulnerabilities that are exploited for successful attacks on the critical infrastructure.