Security Policy Is Critical Infrastructure

Regulated organizations increasingly need to treat security policy as critical infrastructure, according to an analysis published by TechRadar.

An essential system is one whose failure would cause intolerable harm to customers, markets, or public safety. Payment platforms in clearing banks and SCADA networks in power distribution therefore carry the highest governance obligations, including continuous monitoring, validated change control, and demonstrable resilience.

The policy environment across firewalls, cloud controls, and microsegmentation determines which systems can communicate, which connections are blocked, and which exceptions remain active. A misconfigured segmentation rule can disconnect a payment service from its settlement platform, while temporary development-to-production access can remain months after launch if no one owns its removal.

The article argues that many organizations still manage these environments as operational housekeeping. Rules accumulate through change requests, ownership becomes unclear, and the original purpose of a rule may exist only in a ticket. This can leave organizations able to operate their policy surface but unable to explain it.

UK regulatory frameworks increasingly demand ongoing evidence that access is intentional. The FCA's operational resilience regime, Ofgem's assessment against the NCSC's Cyber Assessment Framework, and the planned Cyber Security and Resilience Bill all support this direction. The frameworks do not prescribe specific firewall rules; they require organizations to prove that permitted access matches intent and that weaknesses are addressed continuously.