How well is the Western IT infrastructure protected from a nuclear EMP attack?

[Nobody]

With the escalating conflict in Ukraine, usage of tactical nuclear weapon is becoming more of a real fear. Equally scary is detonating one on higher altitute to destroy any unprotected electronics, rendering advanced weapon systems useless - for their success is totally relied upon electronics.

Weapons aside, are those critical civilian IT infrastructure protected enough from such an attack? What are the recovery plans? The Internet, bank balances, mobile communications, cloud data centres, all gone in a second, sending us back to the stone age?

[denbesten]

Square of the distance is the magic term....  Double the distance, one fourth the impact.  Four times the distance, one sixteenth the impact, etc.  Holds true for radiation, communicable diseases and anything else that is not directly aimed at you.  

Disaster Recovery is really not much different in an EMP scenario than a tornado or flood.  Just make sure the recovery site is outside the disaster zone and that it has everything needed to recover (including people).

[Caute_cautim]

@Nobody @denbesten It is hardly likely that the majority of organisations will be prepared for such an onslaught, let alone Disaster Recovery or BCP at all.   An EMP pulse from Nuclear devices, can be widespread, unless you have a collection of Valve type equipment or have formal TEMPEST protected equipment.  Then the fallout is likely to be very high indeed.  This could turn out to rather like a Supply Chain attack, when one segment goes down, many outages are likely, including "fallout" especially if the Jetstream is conveying the radiated winds towards other parts of the world.

I can remember well into the 80's, protection, and bunkers still exist,. but the majority of these facilities, will now be emptied and relegated to the not in use pile. 

We have to assume that, the majority of communications systems would be down including mobile Cellphones systems etc. 

Regards

Caute_Cautim