A Critical Infrastructure Protection Is Not Just A National Issue But Also A Global Responsibility

Intelligence and Warning is Border and Transportation Security is responsible for protecting America's borders, territorial waters, and transportation systems by centralizing information-sharing and databases that track and monitor all aspects of border control and America's transportation systems. Domestic Counterterrorism covers a wide variety of activities, ranging from National Security Agency monitoring of telephone conversations to local police monitoring of persons of interest. Protecting Critical Infrastructure and Key Assets identifies a clear set of national goals and objectives and outlines the guiding principles that will underpin our efforts to secure the infrastructures and assets vital to our national security, governance, public health and safety, economy, and public confidence. Defending against Catastrophic Threats reduces vulnerability of the United States to terrorism. Emergency Preparedness and Response will create one emergency response plan to be used at all levels of government and will ensure that first-responders, from the federal government level down to local levels, receive proper training and equipment.

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

The Department of Homeland Security supplies a national protection plan concerning critical infrastructure security. This plan targets a wide audience, including public and private critical infrastructure owners and administrators. Managing risks through identifying, deterring, and disrupting threats to critical infrastructure is the direct focus of this plan. The ability of an organization to reduce the impact of a threat that has occurred and reducing the impact of one that may occur is essential to an active security posture. Compromise of a critical infrastructure such as oil, airports, or traffic flow management could result in a major loss of life or resources (Department of Homeland Security, 2013).

Also, the homeland is safeguarded against acts of terrorism, manmade or natural disasters, and focused on actions to protect the citizens, residents, visitors, critical assets, systems, and networks against the Nation’s greatest risks, by enhancing Protection through cooperation and collaboration with all sectors of society to create conditions for a safer, more secure, and more resilient Nation. Furthermore, the Protection capabilities are achieved through specific, but are not limited to, critical infrastructure protection, cybersecurity, border security, immigration security, protection of key leadership and events, maritime security, transportation security, defense of agriculture and food, defense against weapons of mass destruction threats, and health security (National Preparedness…, 2011). Due to the fact that the private sector owns approximately 85 percent of the nation’s critical infrastructure (banking and financial institutions, telecommunications networks, energy production,and transmission facilities) there is greater emphasis now on public and private sectors forming effective partnerships for protection. A series of Information Sharing and Analysis Centers is one new feature of infrastructure protection, which are public-private partnerships designed to provide members of

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).

Since the September 11, 2001 events, the United States of America gravitated towards a more aggressive approach in its security. The result of the tragic events was the establishment of homeland security. The White House, the federal government and the Congress joined together to establish it. On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush issued an executive order 13228 to establish an Office of Homeland Security within the White House and assigning the Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge as its Director (Bullock, Haddow, & Coppola, 2013, p. 4). Ever since, the United States (U.S.) Department of Homeland Security diversified and evolved the way it is today. The Homeland Defense was also integrated into Homeland Security to protect the U.S. soil and its territories. However, what are Homeland Security and Homeland Defense? This paper will address those question as well as covering their missions/goals, tasks, duties, and responsibilities. In addition, a section of this paper is the assessment of the critical infrastructure protection programs of the U.S. The assessment will also include the overall capability of the nation’s critical infrastructure protection program to ensure the survivability of its critical infrastructure.

When it comes to the protection and mitigating of any structure or organization risk analysis and vulnerability assessments must be conducts so as to know what’s to be protected, the threats manmade or natural disaster, ranking the potential of threat as well as the probability. In terms of critical infrastructure the risk analysis and vulnerability assessment has guidelines from Homeland Security Presidential Directive Number 7(HSPD-7).

Vulnerability assessments on terrorism were designed to establish any loopholes in a security system that are prone to harm or attack by a person who may have intentions to harm a particular location, an event or an individual. The main goal of terrorism vulnerability assessments is to establish the weaknesses of facilities across a variety of probable threats. Once such threats are assessed, physical and operational measures of improvement are put in place so as to make sure that such facilities are adequately protected. Such assessments can be administered to a vast range of facilities ranging from existing site management and new construction design over the life of service of such structures. This paper will delve into critical vulnerability assessment of three locations. The first location being Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden City, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and lastly Corriell Institute for Medical Research.

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).

Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) Number 63 was signed by President Clinton in 1998 establishing the Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP). 1997’s exercise performed by the National Security Agency (NSA) revealed significant vulnerabilities among 36 of the government’s 40,000 networks. The weakness and potential harm to the national security was obvious. In 1997, CIP initiative issued its initial report “calling for a national effort to assure the security of the United States’ increasingly vulnerable and interconnected infrastructures” (Merkow, 2006). In the year of 2001 the world nations realized the strengthening power and opposing threat from the leading terrorist organizations. In the United States the events of September 11 had changed the society forever. The citizens were left felt vulnerable to the attacks and demanded a response from the federal government. The response came in the number of organizational and legislative measures to increase safety of the nation and its citizens. Among all the safety of the nation’s information infrastructure was identified by President George W. Bush among the top priorities to protect the citizens.

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

The Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience advances a national unity of effort to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning, and resilient critical infrastructure (The White House Office of the Press Secretary, February 2013). It is imperative for every nation to develop a critical infrastructure protection plan that will provide the essential services to its society. To archive this, a government must be proactive and coordinate its efforts that will reinforce and maintain secure, functioning, and

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.