Security experts from 14 UIC member organisations all over the world came together on 6 May 2021 for a meeting of the Sabotage, Intrusions & Attacks (SIA) working group (WG), which took place in a virtual format.
UIC’s SIA WG, under the chair of Marita-Annegret Grosser on behalf of Deutsche Bahn AG, deals with a variety of topics relating to railway system disruptions, including procedures to help deal with such disruptions.
The meeting title was “Crisis management in case of combined cyber and physical attacks with a special focus on the collaboration and exchange with the relevant authorities.”
During the first part of the meeting DB Corporate Security gave a presentation on the subject under the title: “An introduction to DB Crisis Management – set up and experiences.” Benjamin Burghard, who works at the DB situation center, explained the reporting chains and processes that would come into play in the event of a combined cyber-physical attack. He clearly demonstrated that DB AG is ready to react to these hybrid incidents and has the relevant structures in place to resolve such crisis.
Marie-Hélène Bonneau and Julika Ramlow then gave a presentation for the UIC Security Division based on the EU-funded Safety4Rails project with the title “improving resilience against combined cyber-physical threats.” They stressed that with regard to the increase in resilience in multimodal transport systems and especially in transport hubs as part of a smart city, communication, cooperation and early exchange of information between the various stakeholders is of outstanding importance.
The meeting was concluded with a round-table format. All participants shared the belief that with increasing IT and IoT applications in daily life, more and more combined cyber-physical attacks could take place in the rail sector. The approach of being prepared ahead of time and thus creating the prerequisite for managing these kinds of risks is a key element for any security strategy.
All results from the WG meeting will be implemented in the Rail Security Hub (https://railsecurityhub.org/).
The next meeting of the SIA WG is planned for autumn 2021.
