Essay On Critical Information Infrastructure

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

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).

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

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).

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.):

The Department of Homeland Security is task with a very important job of coming up with a critical infrastructure and key resources sectors in order to properly protect, withstand, and rapidly recover from all hazards whether is natural disasters or from a terrorist attack. Through a critical infrastructure set in place the Department of Homeland Security can provide strategic guidance to the public and private partners, encouraging national unity of effort, as well as coordinating the overall federal effort to promote the safekeeping and spirit of the United States (The Department of Homeland Security, 2015). The department of Homeland Security’s approach to identifying all the Critical Infrastructures and Key Resources Sectors,

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 highlighted the vulnerability to terrorist attacks. The importance of critical infrastructures to the government, people, and organization can be dependent on the vulnerability towards a national disasters, manmade hazards, and terrorist attack. Contemporary standard of what constitutes critical infrastructures has evolved as a wide array of threats has increased in modern times. Critical infrastructures represent aspects of the economy that makes the nation function as a whole and protecting America’s critical infrastructures and key assets presents an enormous challenge to the Department of Homeland Security.

The term Critical Infrastructure did not come into use until the mid-1990’s. Since the 1970’s there have been 2,723 terrorist attacks that have taken place in the United States, causing a total of 3,570 deaths. About seventy-five (75) percent of those attacks targeted critical infrastructures. Critical Infrastructures (CI) and systems constitute high-value targets (Forest & Howard, 2013). Executive order EO 13010 Critical Infrastructure Protection was issued by president Bill Clinton on July 15th, 1996. This executive order addressed the concerns

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

Below we outline the core elements of such a successful national strategy for infrastructure resilience.

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:

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.

A threat agent is the facilitator of an attack however; a threat is a constant danger to an asset.

Management is one of the most important human activities and has critical impact on life, growth, development or destruction of an organisation. In an organisation, managers with any rank or status should understand their basic duties i.e. maintaining a sustainable conductive environment where people can fulfil their commitments and objectives through collaborative approach. (Akhtar, 2011) A manager is responsible to achieve the business’s goals, visions and objectives by planning, organising, leading and controlling. Dubrin (1994) stated that in every organisation each member of staff must plan, organise, make decisions, and control the resources they need to accomplish the results expected