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U.S. Critical Infrastructure Challenges
By Hank Chase

In a Homeland Security context Critical Infrastructure connotes the largely physical infrastructure on which our way of life and economy are based and which remain for the most part vulnerable to terrorist attack. Think electric power; potable water; natural gas and other petroleum products; telecommunications; and transportation structures like roads, bridges, and tunnels, and all the interdependent elements therein. For example, electric power as a Critical Infrastructure includes both electric power generation facilities (power plants, hydroelectric dams, and the like) but also the vast distribution systems that carry electricity from point of generation to point of consumption and the complex and disparate devices in between such as transformers, switch gear, substations, and related.

Critical Infrastructure also includes cyber or information technology infrastructure that facilitates our lifestyle and commerce - like the internet - and information technology that enables or aids the physical critical infrastructure mentioned above, like computer programs that control the flow of petroleum products through pipelines, for example.

The Department of Homeland Security, has identified for vulnerability assessment and protection activity, broad commercial and functional "sectors" each of which rely to varying degrees on the critical physical and often information infrastructure described above, but also which have unique characteristics, vulnerabilities, and processes that must be examined for susceptibility to and impact from terrorist attack. These sectors are Agriculture, Food, Water, Public Health, Emergency Services, Government, Defense Industrial Base, Information & Telecommunications, Energy, Transportation, Banking & Finance, Chemical Industry & Hazardous Materials, Postal & Shipping, and National Monuments & Icons.

Each of these sectors has been assigned a federal cabinet-level department or independent federal agency "lead" to work with the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the constituent governmental and industrial and commercial organizations in the sector, state & local government, and the local first responder communities to protect elements of the sector from terrorist attack and to ensure the sector or sub-sets of the sector can survive a terrorist attack should one occur. A very daunting, almost paralyzing, task given the size and complexity and the huge number of stakeholders in each of these sectors (think of all the farmers, suppliers, importers, storers, packagers, transporters, inspectors, wholesalers, and retailers that could possibly be included in the Food sector, for example).

There has been good work coming out of the Department of Homeland Security with regard to protecting these sectors and their constituent organizations and enterprises, but it has unfortunately been seemingly piecemeal, halting, and disorganized. Grant money for risk assessments and attendant remediation have gone out to elements of the Water and Energy and other Sectors, as have vulnerability guides for self-assessment to the Water, Chemical, and parts of the Transportation Sector, for example, but not based on an overall and objective Department of Homeland Security national priority scheme and not with binding quality and quantitative requirements tied to national preparedness standards for industry and government.

What I would respectfully suggest to the Department of Homeland Security is that before much more grant and other money flows out of the department to protect Critical Infrastructure, the Department prepares in concert with all important stakeholders - not all stakeholders in the interest of expediency, just the most important ones - an integrated and finite (we cannot protect everything) and prioritized critical asset list that identifies only the most important elements from all sectors that are minimally necessary for continuance of the American way of life and prosperity. Notwithstanding jumping out in an emergent capacity specific location by location based on real and current threat information, only after such a master list is prepared, and I do not discount the Herculean political and practical task that will be, should taxpayer resources be marshaled and applied critical infrastructure by critical infrastructure, to guarantee their underpinning of American society.

Since much of our Critical Infrastructure is in the hands of private industry largely beyond the government's ability to direct changes, I would also encourage the Department of Homeland Security to work with Congress to legislate tax breaks for commercial enterprises willing to conform to a set of national terrorism preparedness standards tailored to a given industry (of course these standards will need to be articulated) and additionally to exploit the SEC's, the Treasury Department's, and even Congress' unique regulatory positions vis a vis the insurance industry to encourage the insurance industry to lower overall liability and workman's compensation and other risk-based policy premiums should an insured party likewise comply with a set of articulated and tailored industrial and commercial terrorism preparedness standards.

There is no doubt that Critical Infrastructure is absolutely necessary to our way of life and economy and that ironically this infrastructure remains, for the most part, vulnerable to terrorist attack. Though important activity has occurred and is underway to safeguard key assets, more disciplined and creative ways are available to achieve the end we all desire: soundly and intelligently protected American infrastructure.

About the Author

Hank Chase, Director of Homeland Security Programs, ITS Corporation. He is a retired Navy Commander who was the inaugural lead for the Department of the Navy (DON) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) program at all Navy and Marine Corps bases worldwide. He developed the Naval Integrated Vulnerability Assessment (NIVA) protocol which became a Department of Defense "Best Practice", and authored the DON CIP self-assessment guide and tool, still the only comprehensive CIP self-assessment guide in the federal government. He also authored the DON Critical Asset List (CAL) and was the Department of the Navy Lead for all CIP-associated vulnerability remediation & mitigation activity Navy and Marine Corps-wide.

He provided extensive input to the draft DOD Anti-Terrorism Construction Standards as the Secretary of the Navy's representative and additionally trained the Joint Task Force (JTF) Olympics (Salt Lake City) in CIP analysis and assessment methods.

Hank appears regularly on Fox News and CNN as an anti-terrorism analyst and through syndicated radio has been heard on most radio stations in America. For more information contact the author at HankC@ITSFed.com.