Problem: Since 9/11 terrorists and extremist groups have taken a different approach to attacking national critical infrastructure. While they possess the capability and have an incentive, it is no longer advantageous to attack our national critical infrastructure directly by means of the physical as this could cause an all-out war against their group or country. Instead, cyber-attacks have become far more prevalent as they have the ability to cripple various types of infrastructure while simultaneously providing anonymity if the attacker chooses. Many attacks come in the form of Ransomware, which holds a network hostage until a payment is given to release it without destruction. For example, "Russia's alleged cyberattack on US government and private sector networks via the US information technology company SolarWinds" (Tennant et al., 2024, p. 66). It is attacks such as the Russia's cyberattack, that can hurt our CI, since it has the ability to effect multiple vectors and can be dual use facilitating technology from both civil and military applications (Carlo et al., 2024). Since our CI is already weakened by lack of proper and continued maintenance, a cyber-attack on the systems that control it can only be the tipping point to destruction. This is why it is just as important to protect CI from cyber-attacks as they continue to pose a real threat from terrorists and extremist groups. Need Assignment Help?