Essay about Assignment 2: Critical Infrastructure Protection

Enrich partnership among Protective Security Advisors, all levels of government, and the private sector to protect critical infrastructure

It is essential to understand America’s critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) and National Infrastructure Protection Program (NIPP) to ensure survivability of its critical assets, while maintaining security for America. “The plans are carried out in practice by an integrated network of Federal departments and agencies, State and local government agencies, private sector entities, and a growing number of regional consortia (DHS, 2009, p. I).” Several agencies work together to mitigate attacks on CIKR to protect public safety and security of the nation. A terrorist may stop at nothing to carry out an attack on CIKR. If an attack or natural disaster does transpire, each agency working together to restore the damage must be timely. Additionally, NIPP helps to identify hazards associated with the various sectors, and provides necessary security measures to harden resources (DHS,

One of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) most important missions is protecting critical infrastructure. Assessing CI vulnerabilities is critical to strengthening their capabilities and ensuring resiliency. Since most of them are privately owned, the Department partners with the private sector in conducting voluntary, non-regulatory vulnerability assessments (“Critical Infrastructure”, 2015). According to Homeland Security (2015), vulnerability assessments are the foundation National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) which outlines how the government and the private sector work together to manage risks to achieve security and resiliency goals (“Critical Infrastructure”, 2015). Protecting America’s electrical power grid is especially complicated because all of the other CIs depend on the energy sector’s

A critical infrastructure is defined as any facility, system, or function which provides the foundation for national security, governance, economic vitality, reputation, and way of life. (http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/NIPP_InfoSharing.pdf)In short, critical infrastructure is by definition essential for the survival of the nation. The USA PATRIOT Act specifically defines critical infrastructure as "systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, (Jena Baker McNeill and Richard Weitz, 2010) so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating

Both parties need to accomplish these objectives with every strategy in protecting the U.S. With having a firm plan that will lead to any issue that both parties are committed to. Critical infrastructure has to have the best analyses and the most modern technology for the best protection.

The homeland security bill meets the prevention portion of the preparedness cycle by mitigation, which provides the necessary capabilities to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters (Cordner, 2016) mainly through collaboration, in addition to information sharing, threat recognition, target hardening or risk management, and intervention (Pelfrey, 2012). This applies to terrorism and transnational crime (intentional acts by people), with hopes to prevent a number of those acts from occurring; and preventing or reducing harm from natural disasters (hurricanes, tornados, and earthquakes) by introducing preventive measures, such as people taking the proper precautions and upgrading buildings. Another target for prevention

I enjoyed reading your discussion question this week as you evaluated different elements of a Homeland Security Assessment plan that could be utilized to assess threats to a local, state, or federal government related to Infrastructure. We have seen over the past few weeks that there is a vital requirement to ensure that our governmental body in the United States provides that all public areas are not only safe and secure but also in a time of emergency they can easily be converted to a secondary purpose. This reserve of interstruchers will ensure that the needs of the Homeland Security Plan have the buildings, highways, and supplies readily available to put all aspects of the risk management plan into place (Fisher, 2004).

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has recognized 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks are considered vital to the United States and if these sectors were incapacitated in any form, this would be detrimental to security, the economy, public and safety. These sectors are identified as the following (Department of Homeland Security, n.d.):

An executive order issued by President George W. Bush on October 16, 2001 established the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. The Board was created with the goals of coordinating “cooperation with and protection of private sector critical infrastructure, state and local governments critical infrastructure, and supporting programs in corporate and academic organization; protection of federal departments and agencies critical infrastructure; and related national security programs” (The White House).

49). In order for all of the leaders of the different infrastructures to be successful at eliminating or mitigating such attacks they will need a common form of communication as all of their systems have been proven to affect each other. One tool to help eliminate such communication barriers is the National Incident Management System (NIMS). This system “is a standardized management plan that provides a core set of concepts for incident command and multi-agency coordination during emergency response” (Kamien, 2012, p. 486). With such systems as NIMS the government realized that no one system can work without the other and if one fails they all fail causing wide spread panic and various other hurdles for emergency responders to respond to. It is up to the government to realize that our world is no longer ran manually, but rather digitally so that we can better prepare for possible cyber attacks on our key critical infrastructures.

Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD-21): Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience outlines the 16 most critical infrastructures within the United States of America. The 16 critical infrastructures are the Chemical Sector, Commercial Facilities Sector, Communications Sector, Critical Manufacturing Sector, Dams Sector, Defense Industrial Base Sector, Emergency Services Sector, Energy Sector, Financial Services Sector, Food and Agriculture Sector, Government Facilities Sector, Healthcare Sector, Information Technology Sector, Nuclear Sector, Transportation System Sector, and Water and Wastewater Sector. The research paper will briefly cover the 16 critical infrastructures within PPD-21 and then delve into the Energy Sector. The intent

With the Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Program, it improves the sharing information voluntarily between owners of infrastructure, operators, and the government. However, with The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) along with Federal, tribal, state, and local analysts, they use the (PCII) program to analyze, identify vulnerabilities, enhances recovery preparedness of measures, develop risk assessments, secure critical infrastructure and protect systems (dhs.gov). The (PCII) also provides information that authorizes a level of protection made easier for DHS to work directly to identify mitigation strategies, vulnerabilities with the infrastructure owners and operators. With the (PCII) protection plan, it increases the

United States’ national infrastructure are resources that are vital to keep commerce operating. Technology have allowed the governments and the private sector to share vital information with them. The nation well-being depend on each of the critical infrastructures, the big question is on how to maintain all of our infrastructure sectors operative without any problem. There a big wave of threats to our nation and if one of this threads go through, it can created a multidimensional problem to the infrastructure system of the country. The main concerns that exist in protecting the U.S. against any attacks to any U.S. infrastructure and in the same time on how to have a system that work well with other agencies. For example; is important to

When we talk about nuclear infrastructure we understand the importance of the protection of such an infrastructure. We understand how critical it is that we have an emergency plan in case of a disaster or attack. Without these emergency plans in place we face an exponential number of casualties. In order to avoid or contain such a situation if it were to ever occur, we shall be using two types of tools to identify the appropriate measures necessary to avoid such a situation. The first tool is a Risk Matrix which will clearly identify what our most serious risk is, the second is a stakeholder matrix which will show us the importance of our resources

Nearly every community has some sort of community risk, threat, and assessment plan that takes into account one of the six potential risks that are of concern to homeland security. Though each of these plans will likely differ from one another, many communities will have the same types of information in their plans. This essay will look at the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment Guide (THIRA), the Community Risk Reduction Planning Guide, as well as FEMA’s National Preparedness plan. Any combination of these guides are a good starting point for every community in America. At top of every communities list as well as the nation is the protection of the critical infrastructure. Loss of infrastructure regardless of how big or small the community is could have very crippling effects on that community.