Resumen
This article relates to the problem of infrastructure risk reduction, further aggravated by phenomenal growth of information and communication technologies. Critical processing and communication structures are increasingly under threat and need to be protected against hackers and criminals. The author is of the view that, considering the IT infrastructure complexity of the modern times, attaining reasonable effectiveness will require an enormous personnel and equipment investment. Further stressed is the point that risks and complexity bear a direct relationship with each other. Today's computer-communication-based system structures are layered with unnecessary complexity due to the mapping of application functions through levels of languages and middlewares onto poor or inappropriate platforms of system software and hardware. Even for critical embedded systems, there is a need for tougher standards as well as complexity reduction via appropriate architectural structuring of hardware and system software.