The CLAIR Model: Another Bloody Framework to Ignore

Oh for fuck’s sake. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse, some academic wanker drops another “conceptual framework” on my desk like it’s supposed to fix the fact that the power grid is held together with deprecated Java and prayers.

The CLAIR Model. Sounds like a bloody air freshener, doesn’t it? But no, it’s someone’s PhD thesis about mapping critical infrastructure interdependencies. Because apparently, when the shit hits the fan and the SCADA systems are melting down, what we really need is a synthesized conceptual fucking framework instead of, I don’t know, actual backups or staff who know which end of a cable to plug in?

According to this guest diary—because apparently inflicting this on regular staff wasn’t punishment enough—they want us to visualize how when the power goes out, the water pumps stop working, and then the data centers overheat, and then the entire goddamn civilization collapses because someone didn’t pay the electricity bill. Genius. Fucking genius. Like I needed a model to tell me that when the generator runs out of diesel, everything goes tits-up.

They’ve got layers and mappings and matrices and all sorts of PowerPoint-porn that looks great in board meetings but won’t do shit when the router is on fire and the CEO is screaming about why Teams isn’t working. “Oh yes, Mr. CEO, I can’t fix the network because I’m too busy synthesizing conceptual interdependencies to understand why the bloody coffee machine relies on the same UPS as the core switches.”

The worst part? The bastards are technically right. These systems are tangled together like a sack of bloody snakes, and when one dies, they all follow like lemmings off a cliff. But do we need another acronym? Another model? We need caffeine, budget, and for vendors to stop shipping systems with default passwords like “admin123”. But sure, let’s diagram the hell out of it until the paper pushes back and someone actually reads the disaster recovery plan instead of using it to level a wobbly desk.

https://isc.sans.edu/diary/rss/32748

Reminds me of the time some consultant tried to sell us a “Resilience Optimization Framework” while the server room was literally flooding because building maintenance had ignored the leak for three days to “observe the interdependency between water and electricity.” I threw the consultant into the puddle. Didn’t even get a write-up because management were too busy trying to find the “wet floor” sign in the CLAIR model documentation to notice.

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