Critical Infrastructure Protection in Homeland Security: Defending a Networked Nation, 2nd Edition

1Origins of Critical Infrastructure Protection

What is the motivation for studying critical infrastructure protection (CIP)? What are the central issues that need to be addressed in order to create a meaningful strategy for dealing with threats against infrastructure? We begin by tracing the development of CIP over several decades and noting that it has evolved through at least seven phases: from initial awareness to combating terrorism, emphasis on natural disaster response, an early definitional phase, a public–private cooperation phase, a federalism versus states phase, a resilience awareness phase, and, after a decade of evolution, a phase characterized by the practical application of risk-informed decision-making.

CIP is a multifaceted topic, because it cuts across many disciplines and jurisdictions. It cuts vertically across federal, state, local, and tribal political boundaries, and it cuts horizontally across public and private organizations. It has a variety of policy issues at one extreme and a diverse set of scientific and engineering issues at the other extreme. The most glaring example of this is the electric power grid, which is pulled in many different directions by political, social, engineering, and public–private forces. The topics in this book touch on all of these but focus mainly on architectural and policy issues at the highest level.

One of the most difficult tasks of protecting critical infrastructure (CI) is the problem of deciding who is responsible ...