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The UK’ s critical national infrastructure( CNI) spans 13 distinct sectors, from energy and utilities to transport, healthcare and public broadcasting. Each has its own unique challenges, regulatory frameworks and operational demands. Yet, despite these differences, there’ s a growing recognition that adopting a unified‘ umbrella’ approach to securing, monitoring and managing critical national infrastructure could benefit all by improving resilience, establishing a secure baseline, fostering collaboration and driving innovation across the board.
But how? If each sector is so specialised, can a single framework really work? The answer lies in identifying shared challenges, sharing learning across sectors, and delivering scalable solutions that tackle those shared challenges.
A huge misconception about CNI is that its sectors operate in isolation. In reality, they’ re deeply interconnected and interdependent. A hospital can’ t function without electricity. A logistics network depends on roads and telecommunications networks. A national broadcaster relies on energy and digital infrastructure.
This interdependency means that a failure or compromise in one sector can cascade into others, something we’ ve seen play out in real time. Take the impact of Storm Arwen in November 2021, when major power outages left some without access to their digital land lines, and no way of contacting emergency services. Also in 2021, a problem with railway drainage caused by blockages in the wastewater network almost caused the National Blood Bank to flood.
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