Surface transportation refers to ground-based transportation infrastructure such as rail, transit, buses, freight corridors, and related control systems. In cyber security, it matters because these environments mix business IT, operational technology, safety systems, and third-party services. That combination creates operational cyber risk: a problem in one system can affect dispatching, signaling, scheduling, ticketing, maintenance, or service continuity.
Attackers often target surface transportation with ransomware, credential theft, or supply-chain compromise to disrupt operations or steal sensitive data. Defenders reduce risk by segmenting networks, limiting remote access, maintaining accurate asset inventories, monitoring logs, and testing incident response and recovery procedures. Regulatory reporting and cybersecurity assessments are also important because they help operators prove control effectiveness and identify gaps before an outage or intrusion becomes a safety issue.