Master Thesis

Critical infrastructures like energy-, telecommunication- and transport networks are an important part of our everyday life. Albeit not very obvious in some cases, information and communication technology has increasingly taken control of those infrastructures in the recent years. Hardly any infrastructure can operate these days without the help of some IT systems. While the advantages of implementing core processes in critical infrastructures with ICT are often obvious, what is sometimes pushed aside is the effect that this has on security. This Master Thesis analyzes the specific impacts that IT brings to the security of critical infrastructures. They are consolidated into thirteen influence factors, which are described in detail and then further evaluated using the DEMATEL method. For this, a number of experts in the area of IT security in critical infrastructures was surveyed to rate the influence that these factors exert on each other. The resulting analysis is presented in this thesis.