MITIGATION OF OPERATIONAL IMPACTS ON AIRPORTS BY EARLY AWARENESS OF MALICIOUS EVENTS IMPACTING LINKED CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURES

Abstract

This paper introduces to security management that is conducted at infrastructure installations and their corresponding technical assets. Malicious activities at those infrastructures lead to a loss of service provision or can even introduce cascading effects towards other connected infrastructures. If an infrastructure satisfies a significant societal need, it is considered a critical infrastructure. The cascading effects can cause secondary effects at the connected infrastructures, such as airports. Airport operations are central to long-distance societal mobility and even small disruptions have knock-on effects throughout the air transport network. The cascading effects that can affect the airport and that originate at linked infrastructures are not well known and used for airport management purposes. In what operational way can an Airport Operations Center make use of early awareness of attacks on linked critical infrastructures? By looking at the existing state of the art and ongoing projects in infrastructure security management research and airport management a gap identification is conducted. The identified weaknesses and limitations are partially addressed by the current research projects. However, the necessary airport-centric security management view is not pursued to answer the research question. As a consequence, this paper proposes ideas for necessary airport-centric infrastructure security research.