Critical infrastructures (CRITIS) are organizations and facilities of major importance to the state community and security of supply, such as large hospitals, data centers, utilities and independent power producers.

According to the BSI (German federal office for information security), effective cyber security measures must be implemented and periodically verified not only for critical infrastructures, but also for facilities of public interest. Due to the rapidly increasing number of attacks even on companies and facilities, that do not directly belong to these categories, such as smaller hospitals, the self-interest of those companies and facilities in cyber security increased significantly. It is also to be expected that key cyber security requirements will be successively transferred (cascaded) to other areas.