Critical Infrastructure: Identifying Threats

The security of the United States and living without being under a constant threat should be very important to all citizens and those who visit this country. The research revealed some interesting facts, it is impossible to secure every commercial building, airport, bridge, bypass, and government building. One element of the security is that terrorists will not have the ability to attack every place in the United States. However, everything is a possible target and terrorists want to do as damage as possible and cause the greatest amount of disruption in our way of life as possible.

Despite being the superpower of the world, the United States of America does not enjoy any exception from the global threats and challenges. The people in denial of such global threats finally woke up to the reality on the dawn of September 11th, 2001, when terrorists struck American financial hub in the city of New York. A badly shaken nation shocked by the magnitude of brutality quickly assembled behind its president to pass a legislation, known as the USA Patriot Act, to tackle internal and external threats to this nation on a war footing basis. The haste with which this legislation was passed made it controversial almost immediately. No doubt, the intent was valid and there was an absolute need to tackle threats to the homeland, however,

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,

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

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).

Critical Infrastructure can be protected by assessing the threats and vulnerability. After that, a plan to counter threats and vulnerabilities should be developed (International Journal of Control and Automation, n.d.). There is no such thing as a perfect plan or a perfect world. Just because there are vulnerabilities does mean it can be fixed or brought down to a minimum. These are the best results to ensure Critical Infrastructure Protection from the International Journal of Control and Automation:

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.

To combat these major issues and maintain all critical infrastructure safety, the Government of the United States mandated that risk analysis methods and scenarios be introduced and implemented. Before 9/11, many assets

America’s government protects us from an attack with programs that advance our nuclear systems, defence systems to protect from an actual attack and pacts with other countries to help us fight against someone in a nuclear war. As a result, America has systems ready to defend everyone in the country from a nuclear attack.

Both identify imminent commercial and agricultural threats due to flooding as well as an impact on the airports, railways, and highways as part of the Supply Chain Integrity Capability. As part of the Infrastructure Systems Core Capabilities, impacts for flooding include electrical outages for an estimated 72 hours as well as concerns for potable water and sewage services.

U.S national security is the idea that the U.S. government and related administrative parties are working to defend its citizens and inhabitants from external and internal threats or attacks on a national level. With this being said, US national security and even the world right now are at incredibly volatile and unstable states. In a sense, threats are facing the US at all angles. There is the chance of a display of aggression from North Korea. China is a considerably powerful country that could potentially cause the US significant damage physically and economically. Al Qaeda is a terrorist group with an extensive history of violence against America. More recently notable is the ISIS terrorist

The United States is under attack. To be exact, the nation’s power grid is under attack in the form of cyber warfare. On May 21st, 2013 Congressmen Edward J. Markey and Henry A Waxman published a report that provided the findings from information that they had requested from over 150 utility companies (of which 60% responded). More than a dozen utilities reported “daily, constant, or frequent attempted cyber-attacks” (Markey & Waxman) with one utility reporting that they have about 10,000 attempted attacks per month!

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

The damage of a full-fledged cyber attack would be devastating, the destruction would be unparalleled to any other tragedy that has occurred America. Since technology is responsible for providing America with vital entities and resources, an unadulterated cyber attack would nearly fail the American economy; this is what is known as critical systems failure. Weapons of mass destruction and cyber attacks present imminent threats of critical systems failure. Although currently Americas’ critical infrastructures are coordinated by controlled systems, majority of these systems are indeed connected to the American cyberspace. This exposes one of America’s most vulnerable spot amidst cyber security. Another major vulnerable spot within the nations IT security would be the geographical physical location for each of Americas primary infrastructures, as well as their productivity. Due to the proximal locations, the major infrastructures could very well be infiltrated by one efficient CNA.