Critical Infrastructure And Key Resources (CIKR)

The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for “consolidating existing federal government response plans into a single, coordinated national response plan.” (GAO Reports. 2007.) The Homeland Security Act of 2002 allows them to handle all sorts of disasters from natural disasters to terrorist attacks. DHS also “Operates the Federal

The components of DHS are Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Border Patrol, Transportation Security Administration, and the U.S. Customs Service and the last federal agency the Secret Service (Oliver, W. M., Marion, N. E., & Hill, J. B. 2015). These components will help secure the protection of the people of the United States from terrorist attacks and any other disasters such as the preparation for a nuclear attack that possible deals with chemical, radiologist, and biologist or any other man-made material. The Department of Homeland goal is to also focus more on how to help the people to prepare for emergency preparedness and how to properly response if any act occurs and to also know how to properly recover

Throughout its history, FEMA has had two main missions. First, FEMA’s mission is to enhance the federal government 's capacity to deal with and survive foreign attacks. The main types of foreign attacks that FEMA is tasked to respond to relate to terrorist attacks and nuclear war. The second mission of FEMA is to assist state and local authori¬ties to respond to man-made and natural disasters that are to enormous for the local and state resources to respond to efficiently. While national security focuses more on civil defense, state and local authorities are more focused on natural disasters such as hurricanes, storms, floods and potential nuclear power accidents. These divergent focuses really presents FEMA with huge challenges since federal security authorities’ main objective is quite different from state or local authorities’ focus. Considering that FEMA designed the Federal Response Plan, the agency has the challenge of balancing these interests while working on its two key missions.

Ensuring Resilience to Disasters has more tasking’s than another mission and involves many different agencies to accomplish those tasks. The four tasks are to mitigate hazards, enhance preparedness, ensure effective emergency response, and rapidly recover. The main agency that is responsible for these tasking’s is FEMA. FEMA’s mission is to “reduce the loss of life and property and protect communities nationwide from all hazards, including natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters” (FEMA, 2017, p.2). FEMA works with federal and State services to assist them in accomplishing their goals. They also assist local services by assisting in setting up emergency management agencies (LEMA) and set guidance for Emergency Operations Planning (EOP). EOP’s are “plans that provide an overview of the jurisdiction’s preparedness and response strategies. It describes expected hazards, outlines agency roles and responsibilities, and explains how the jurisdiction keeps the plan current.” (FEMA, 2010,

This program is the Department of Homeland Security’s final priority to “plan, train, and equip police, fire, and paramedics to react successfully to terrorism; and promotes recovery with the assistance of disaster specialists.” (Homeland Security, 2015) One of the examples of disaster specialists that help assist in disasters like Hurricane Katrina is the Federal Emergency Management Agency also known as FEMA. FEMA helps communities with reducing their risk, helps its different agency officials prepare for all types of hazards, and also helps people in communities get back on their

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,

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).

These are the people who regularly interact with the public, who are responsible for public safety and security, who own and operate our nation’s critical infrastructures and services, who perform research and develop technology, and who keep watch, prepare for, and respond to emerging threats and disasters” (Homeland Security). There are five core missions that DHS preforms;

Therefore, COOP or BCM will play a significant role during the response and recovery efforts and it will also help maintain the NEFs during those difficult times. However, continuity planning is a coordinated effort that must be in sync with all levels of government, from the Federal Government to the Local Government, as well as with the private sector (Homeland Security Council, 2007). In those efforts, the Federal Government plays a key role in coordinating and executing COOPs within the different agencies and departments that exist within the Federal Government ((Homeland Security Council, 2007). Moreover, the Federal Government assist State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) Governments as well as private sector owner and operators of Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources (CIKR). The Federal Government’s assistance could be financial help in the form of grants or helping them develop their own COOPs or BCMs ( (Homeland Security Council, 2007). SLTT Governments and the private sector share the responsibility of identifying the essential needs of their communities as well as identifying the vulnerabilities that could prevent them from maintaining their PMEFs (Homeland Security Council, 2007). Moreover, they are also responsible for creating strategies and effectively allocating resources to reduce those vulnerabilities (Homeland Security Council,

This is a highly responsible professional position located within the Bureau of Preparedness and Response. This position works under the supervision of the OMC Manager-SES of the Evaluation and Analysis Unit. This position is responsible to implement and sustain the unit’s projects pertaining to the areas of Vulnerability Assessment, Preparedness Capabilities Evaluation, Response System Evaluation and Analysis, and Analysis and Evaluation Management. The specific duties and responsibilities of this position are:

* Explain how the United States conducts an all-hazards response in the five preparedness mission areas of prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and disaster recovery.

First, we need to understand the difference between logical and physical topographical layouts. Logical layouts are how the data move across the network and physical layouts are how the network relates to its wires and hardware (Kevin Wallace, 2012). Note that how the data moves through the network is not going to be the same as how the data is physically structured (Michael Harris, 2008). The most coming physical topologies are Bus, Star, and Star-Wire Ring (Kevin Wallace, 2012). The most coming logical topologies are Bus, Ring, and Star (Kevin Wallace, 2012).

The private sector plays a vital role in carrying out the objectives within all 16 sector specific plans. The Emergency Services Sector includes but is not limited to first responding services such as; public work, fire, medical or police services. The goals and objectives of ESS specific plans are to provide first responder services as one of their main missions is the prevention to life. This sector is extremely important as they are the first responders to any type of incident that may even be impacted to other sectors. The National Infrastructure Protection Plan for this sector describes the tasks, duties and responsibilities that the private sector has in order to effectively and successfully operate this types of critical infrastructures. Just like any other sector, this sector requires the private sector to have a good relationship with state, local, tribal, territorial governments, Federal Government and outside organizations as well. Threats, risks, and vulnerabilities are acknowledged and analyzed in every respective infrastructure as they are all different. All factors are then prioritized in order to prevent the best security and mitigate the possible consequences. Public and private sectors must have the ability to continue their businesses and operations after an event has occurred. When an incident of event occur, operating plans must be created and established in order to prevent stoppages or deterrence to the operations. This helps reduce the

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.

On August 29, 2009, Hurricane Katrina struck the United States Gulf Coast. It was a Category 3 Hurricane, according to the Saffir Simpson Scale. Winds gusted to up to 140 miles per hour, and the hurricane was almost 400 miles wide . The storm itself did a tremendous amount of damage, but the storm’s aftermath was cataclysmic. Many claimed that the federal government was slow to meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the storm. This paper will examine the four elements of disaster management – preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation – as well as an analysis on the data presented.