Critical services --- Bennette, good point: utilities certainly have to include also water supplies and similar.

I wonder if 'financial services' should be extended to a broader set of services - even digital services (which is different from telecom as utilities, and can include e-government, e-health, etc)?

One important lesson is that the mere identification of critical sector is not the end; each of the identified sectors have certain elements (infrastructure, suppliers) that are critical, while others are not so much. For instance, while the energy/power supply sector is certainly critical, within it there may be small hydroplants or other whose eventual shut-down wouldn't really result with a national security issue; same goes for telecoms where not all providers/ISPs are critical.

If we simply mark 10 or 15 critical sectors, will we have resources to protect all to the full extent? US and EU might possibly have resources, but how about individual countries - especially developing? Thus, whether we identify more specific sectors, or only 2-3 very broad ones, we anyhow have to dive deeper and see what is critical in a particular country.

Source author: Vladimir Radunovic vladar@diplomacy.edu