Critical infrastructure carries a different kind of stake than almost any other sector. When something fails here, it doesn’t stay contained to a spreadsheet or a stock price. For example, in 2025, roughly half of all ransomware attacks targeted critical infrastructure sectors (manufacturing, energy, transportation, water, and healthcare among them). In July 2026, a coordinated cyberattack disrupted water and wastewater systems across more than 30 Minnesota communities, closely following a federal advisory warning that state-linked actors were actively exploiting exposed industrial controllers across U.S. infrastructure. These attacks increasingly target the unglamorous entry points nobody thinks to lock down (like a default password left on an internet-exposed controller, a remote access tool nobody audited) because attackers have learned that infrastructure environments are often easier to reach than they are to defend.