Vulnerability

Definitions

European Definitions

A characteristic of an element of the CI’s design, implementation, or operation that renders it susceptible to disruption or destruction by a threat and includes dependencies on other types of infrastructure.

Other International Definitions

NATO CEP / EAPC

A characteristic of an element of the critical infrastructure’s design, implementation, or operation that renders it susceptible to destruction or incapacitation by a threat.

UNISDR

The characteristics and circumstances of a community, system or asset that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard .

There are many aspects of vulnerability, arising from various physical, social, economic, and environmental factors. Examples may include poor design and construction of buildings, inadequate protection of assets, lack of public information and awareness, limited official recognition of risks and preparedness measures, and disregard for wise environmental management.

Vulnerability varies significantly within a community and over time. This definition identifies vulnerability as a characteristic of the element of interest (community, system or asset) which is independent of its exposure. However, in common use the word is often used more broadly to include the element’s exposure.

National Definitions

France

(in French) Vulnérabilité: propension d’un milieu, d’un bien ou d’une personne à subir des conséquences dommageables à la suite d’un événement. Elle ne produit pas nécessairement de dommage par elle-même .

Non-official translation: propensity of an environment, a good or a person to suffer from adverse consequences as a result of an event. It does not necessarily produce damage itself.

Norway

The vulnerability of a system is an expression of the weaknesses and deficiencies in the system and special circumstances increases the likelihood that threats will materialize in a security incident (Sårbarheten til et system er et uttrykk for de svakheter og mangler som finnes i systemet og spesielle omstendigheter som øker sannsynligheten for at trusler vil materialisere seg i en sikkerhetshendelse).

Examples of special circumstances may be size, complexity, that many actors are involved, geographical spread, frequent changes and deferred location.

USA

A physical feature or operational attribute that renders an entity open to exploitation or susceptible to a given hazard .

Standard Definition

ISO/IEC 27000:2014

Weakness of an asset or control that can be exploited by one or more threats .

See also

• Exposure
• Hazard
• Risk
• Threat