A systematic tabular approach for risk and resilience assessment and improvement in the telecommunication industry

The economic and social well-being of citizens depends on the reliable functioning of critical infrastructures, and in particular, the provision of a reliable telecommunication system. Integrated risk and resilience analysis and improvement processes have been proposed and adopted to critical infrastructure systems. However, fast, tabular, and in operational contexts realizable implementations are still lacking. The paper proposes a set of interlinked tables for a fast, semi-quantitative implementation of such a process. The sequence and structure of the tables is chosen to capture the relevant input for the risk and resilience analysis and management process. Pulling from previous literature, four main constituents are identified and implemented as separate tables: system components, system functions, threats and mitigation options. The linkage between the tables and their contents, including minimum consistency requirements are expected to be sufficient for a successful implementation of the resilience analysis and management process. The linkage allows for direct computation of the correlations between the four constituents, e.g. system components with system functions, system functions with potential disruptions to identify critical combinations and threats with potential counter measures. Furthermore, quantification options and potential counter measures for the critical combinations can be inferred. Sample entries are given for the telecommunication infrastructure and the advantages of the approach are discussed.