KRITIS stands for ‘Critical Infrastructures’ and refers to facilities, installations, or parts thereof that are of high importance for the functioning of the community. Their failure or impairment would lead to sustained supply shortages, significant disruptions to public safety, or other serious consequences.
Sectors considered as KRITIS:
- Energy: For example, energy supply with gas, electricity, fuels, or district heating
- Water: This includes drinking water supply and wastewater disposal
- Nutrition: Such as the production, processing, and trade of food
- Information technology and telecommunications: For example, the processing, storage, and transmission of data
- Transport and traffic: This includes passenger transport as well as goods transport, logistics, air, road and rail transport, and shipping
- Health: This includes inpatient medical care, the supply of medical products and pharmaceuticals, and laboratory diagnostics
- Finance and insurance: From cash supply and payment transactions to insurance services
- Government and administration: This includes government, justice, emergency services, and disaster control.
Information Technology Sector
In the field of information technology, KRITIS plays a special role, as IT infrastructures serve as the backbone of many critical systems. IT systems must be secure and reliable to ensure the functionality and integrity of other critical infrastructures. A failure of IT systems can have far-reaching consequences, for example in the form of production outages, supply shortages, or threats to public safety. Thus, larger data centers are also considered critical infrastructures.
