CISA updates MTS Guide with enhanced tools for resilience assessment in maritime infrastructure

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has enhanced its Marine Transportation System Resilience Assessment Guide (MTS Guide) by introducing a new user-friendly web-based tool for maritime stakeholders. The update adds important new resources and tools to better evaluate and address the resilience of port networks as well as the inland marine transportation system.

The latest guide incorporates expertise from partner agencies, alongside accessible information sources, methodologies, and datasets that work on improving the evaluation and strengthening of resilience in port networks and the inland marine transportation system. They provide a systematic framework for resilience assessments in the maritime domain, offering standardized guidance and incorporating sophisticated techniques like Bayesian Network Network Analysis to assess port resilience more effectively.

Released last May, the MTS Guide provides an approach to conducting a resilience assessment that is customizable and scalable according to user objectives, desired level of information for decision-making, scope of interest, and available resources. 

The resilience assessment process is similar to other planning and project management frameworks where the user moves through a series of phases intended to help them identify the issues and stakeholders, focus the assessment and activities, execute the assessment, and implement findings. A resilience assessment will help determine whether the necessary capabilities exist and are sufficient to maintain critical functions under stresses and shocks. 

The MTS Guide emphasizes taking a broad view of the system to understand dependencies and find potential vulnerabilities and opportunities for resilience enhancement. A holistic view that looks at physical infrastructure, people, organizations, and their interactions will help to formulate a portfolio of strategies to reduce overall losses when disruptive events occur. These could include creative and ‘easy-win’ solutions, ones that improve supporting capacities, build characteristics that activate during and after disruptive events, and deliver diverse benefits.

The four key resilience assessment objectives cover defining functions and characterizing systems in steady state; analyzing critical infrastructure and dependencies; understanding the impacts of disruptive events; and identifying and evaluating resilience enhancement alternatives. 

The MTS Guide also provides a framework for designing a resilience assessment, and a suite of resources and methodologies for executing an assessment. By leveraging these data sets, users can gain valuable insights into the various factors that contribute to a resilience assessment. These resources are tailored to accommodate different objectives, based on available time and available resources. 

CISA also detailed the MTS Resilience Assessment Resource Matrix (RARM) referenced in the MTS Guide, which is a web-based library of over 100 off-the-shelf tools, methods, data sources, and other useful resources from various government agencies, research labs, industry, and academic institutions. ​​The matrix was co-developed under a Memorandum of Agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Engineering Research and Development Center (USACE-ERDC) using a special Congressional appropriation for the agencies (members of the U.S. Committee on Marine Transportation Systems) and other resources.

The MTS matrix features a built-in filtering capability that helps users of the MTS Guide select the most appropriate analysis resources tailored to the scope, complexity, and objectives of their maritime system assessment projects. This enhancement facilitates a deeper understanding and more effective planning of resilience assessments for maritime infrastructure systems and functions. 

By utilizing the matrix, users can identify the appropriate tools and methods that align with their goals, leading to the development of a strong understanding of resilience and implementing strategies to enhance their overall resilience capabilities. 

Last month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it is improving maritime cybersecurity in the Indo-Pacific region by partnering with the Government of Indonesia under initiatives supported by the U.S. Department of State International Narcotics and Law Enforcement and U.S. Department of Defense Threat Reduction Agency programs.

Anna Ribeiro

Industrial Cyber News Editor. Anna Ribeiro is a freelance journalist with over 14 years of experience in the areas of security, data storage, virtualization and IoT.