Outage
Primary reference(s)
ITU, 1996. X.791: Profile for trouble management function for ITU-T applications. Series X: Data Networks and Open system Communication. International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Accessed 30 November 2019.
Additional scientific description
Cybersecurity is crucial to ensuring universal, trustworthy, and equitable access to connectivity (ITU, 2019a). Cyber outages or disruptions of service or operations are critical issues for maintaining cybersecurity.
In their summary on the role of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in building confidence and trust in the use of information and communication technology (ICT), the ITU stated that “Enhancing cybersecurity and protecting critical information infrastructures are essential to every nation’s social and economic development. Cybersecurity-related incidents can compromise the availability, integrity and confidentiality of information transiting on networks and disrupt the operations and functioning of critical infrastructure, digital and physical. They can also compromise the security of people and whole countries where a cyberthreat is a potential malicious act that seeks to damage data, steal data, or disrupt digital life in general, irrespective of whether it actually occurs or succeeds” (ITU, 2019a). In particular, ITU noted that cyber disruptions are a cyber threat.
Metrics and numeric limits
Not found.
Key relevant UN convention / multilateral treaty
Sustainable Development Goals: The ITU Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) is a trusted reference that measures the commitment of countries to cybersecurity at a global level – to raise awareness of the importance and different dimensions of the issue. As cybersecurity has a broad field of application, cutting across many industries and various sectors, each country’s level of development or engagement is assessed along five pillars – legal measures, technical measures, organisational measures, capacity building, and cooperation – and then aggregated into an overall score (ITU, 2020b).
Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, Strasbourg 1981. The Council of Europe (CoE) convention on cybercrime also known as the Budapest Convention is the only binding international treaty on this issue. At the time of writing the total number of countries that had ratified the convention was 64 and includes both members and non-members of the CoE (CoE, 1981).
Examples of drivers, outcomes and risk management
Modern society expects high levels of data and communication performance, driven by the increase in use of mobile phones, computers and digital services. Network architectures are growing in scale and complexity and are exposed to a number of challenges in meeting expected levels of operational performance and reliability (Liu and Ji, 2009; Hasegawa and Uchida, 2019). The drivers of outages include non-performance of components, wireless communication connectivity issues, malware, attacks (interruption, interception, modification and fabrication), misconfiguration due to human error, power failure, and natural hazards and disasters (Erjongmanee and Ji, 2011; Djatmiko et al., 2013; Arif and Wang, 2018).
To minimise outages in data and communication networks there needs to be effective monitoring to predict network outages and ensure network resilience (Hasegawa and Uchida, 2019). The ITU improves cybersecurity readiness, protection, and incident response capabilities of Member States by conducting CyberDrills at the regional and international level (ITU, 2020b). A CyberDrill is an annual event during which cyber-attacks, information security incidents, or other types of disruption are simulated in order to test an organisation’s cyber capabilities; from being able to detect a security incident to the ability to respond appropriately and minimise any related impact. Through a CyberDrill, participants are able to validate policies, plans, procedures, processes, and capabilities that enable the preparation, prevention, response, recovery, and continuity of operations. As of 2020, the ITU has organised more than 29 CyberDrill events around the world to enhance cybersecurity capacity and capabilities through regional collaboration and cooperation (ITU, 2020a).
At the ITU/ Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) Cyber Security Programme on GCI, one question asked of member states is that when they conduct regular cyber security exercises such as CyberDrills, do they have a “planned event during which an organization simulates a cyber disruption to develop or test capabilities such as preventing, detecting, mitigating, responding to, or recovering from the disruption. Are the exercises organized periodically or repeatedly” (ITU, 2019b).
References
Arif, A. and Z. Wang, 2018. Distribution network outage data analysis and repair time prediction using deep learning. Accessed 30 November 2019.
CoE, 1981. Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (Strasbourg Convention). European Treaty Series - No. 108. Council of Europe (CoE). Accessed 4 October 2020.
Djatmiko, M., D. Schatzmann, A. Friedman, X. Dimitropoulos and R. Boreli, 2013. Privacy preserving distributed network outage monitoring. 2013 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS), 2013, pp. 69-70. Accessed 30 November 2019.
Erjongmanee, S. and C. Ji, 2011. Large-scale network-service disruption: Dependencies and external factors. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 4:375-386. Accessed 30 November 2019.
Hasegawa, Y. and M. Uchida, 2019. Predicting network outages based on Q-drop in optical network. IEEE 43rd Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC). Accessed 30 November 2019.
ITU, 2019a. Role of ITU in building confidence and trust in the use of ICTs. International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Accessed 5 October 2020.
ITU, 2019b. ITU/BDT Cyber Security Programme on Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI). Guidelines for Member States. International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Accessed 5 October 2020.
ITU, 2020a. The ITU 2020 Global CyberDrill, September-November 2020. International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Accessed 5 October 2020.
ITU, 2020b. Global Cybersecurity Index. International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Accessed 5 October 2020.
Liu, G. and C. Ji, 2009. Scalability of network-failure resilience: Analysis using multi-layer probabilistic graphical models. Accessed 30 November 2019.