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Critical Infrastructure Security

Critical Infrastructure Security

Identifying Critical Infrastructure

Critical infrastructure is the physical and cyber systems and assets so vital to the United States that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on our physical or economic security or public health or safety.

Managing Risk Through Collaboration

Eighteen critical infrastructure sectors have been identified:

  • Food and Agriculture
  • Banking and Finance
  • Chemical
  • Commercial Facilities
  • Communications
  • Critical Manufacturing
  • Dams
  • Defense Industrial Base
  • Emergency Services
  • Energy
  • Government Facilities
  • Healthcare and Public Health
  • Information Technology
  • National Monuments and Icons
  • Nuclear Reactors, Materials and Waste
  • Postal and Shipping
  • Transportation Systems
  • Water

The Department manages risks to infrastructure by collaborating with government and private sector partners and the public to:

  1. share information,
  2. develop and implement protective actions,
  3. enhance resilience, and
  4. ensure rapid recovery from the impacts of natural disasters or terrorist actions.

This is accomplished through regulation of certain chemical facilities, public-private partnership, and the risk management framework laid out by the National Infrastructure Protection Plan.

Infrastructure Protection Results

  • Surveys and Assessments – The Department’s Office of Infrastructure Protection (IP) has conducted more than 7,300 security surveys and vulnerability assessments of the nation’s critical infrastructure to identify security gaps and potential vulnerabilities and provide protective options for consideration to enhance the protection and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure.  IP has also conducted more than 1,500 capability assessments of state and local bomb squads, explosives detection canine teams, dive teams, and SWAT teams to identify gaps in equipment, training, and assets required for effective response to improvised explosive device threats.
  • Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) – Since 2007, DHS has implemented the CFATS program to regulate security at high-risk chemical facilities.  To date, the Department has reviewed an estimated 40,000 consequence assessment questionnaires submitted by potentially high-risk chemical facilities.  Of these, approximately 4,500 facilities have been preliminarily identified as high-risk, resulting in the development and submission of Security Vulnerability Assessments.  Of those facilities, nearly all have received final high-risk determinations and are in the process of completing Site Security Plans to bolster safety and security measures.
  • Since FY 2006, DHS has provided nearly $3.8 billion in grant funding through the Port Security, Transit Security and Buffer Zone Protection grant programs to protect critical infrastructure from terrorism. These grants support security plans, facility security upgrades, training, exercises, law enforcement anti-terrorism operations, and capital projects for risk mitigation of high threat infrastructure.
  • Since 2006, the Critical Infrastructure Key Resources Information Sharing Environment has provided over 13,000 products, reaching over 40,000 federal, state, local, territorial, tribal and private sector partners. It also provides the private sector entry into Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative through the Suspicious Activity Reporting Tool for Critical Infrastructure, and is a mechanism for fusion centers to share regional infrastructure protection information directly with their private sector partners via the Homeland Security Information Network-Critical Sectors.
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