Technical debt can be described as an accumulation of fixes and outdated systems badly in need of updating. And infrastructure, because of the size and cost of building and maintaining public and private projects such as water systems, electrical grids, telecommunications systems, and transportation systems, is particularly prone to an accumulation of such debt.

“Technical debt is one of those invisible issues that people either know they have a problem with, or they don’t know, and that’s worse,” Roger Williams, vice president of research at Gartner, tells CSO. “It happens because it’s cheaper and easier to put things off for tomorrow, just like anything we have at home.”

Legacy systems were a hot topic at the most recent RSA Conference, and the issue was perhaps best summarized in a presentation by Allan Friedman, senior advisor and strategist at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) aptly titled “All good things: End of life and end of support in policy and practice.”