The National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) provides a coordinated approach to critical infrastructure and key resource protection roles and responsibilities for federal, state, local, tribal, and private sector security partners. The NIPP sets national priorities, goals, and requirements for effective distribution of funding and resources which will help ensure that the U.S. government, economy, and public services continue in the event of a terrorist attack or other disaster.

The Plan includes, for the first time, important language suggesting that it is now national policy for the government to develop and support a system of market based incentives to encourage greater private sector adherence to widely accepted best practices.

The language included in the plan is virtually identical to that supplied by the ISAlliance in commenting on the draft NIPP before its release on June 30th 2006. The ISAlliance has established a leadership role in both the IT and Communications Sector Coordinating Councils. 

The new language states: “In assessing the value proposition for the private sector, there is a clear national security and homeland security interest in ensuring the collective protection of the Nation’s CI/KR. Government can encourage industry to go beyond efforts already justified by their corporate business needs to assist in broad-scale CI/KR protection through activities such as…Creating an environment that encourages and supports incentives for companies to voluntarily adopt widely accepted, sound security practices” 

• Strong public-private partnerships which will foster relationships and facilitate coordination within and across critical infrastructure and key resource sectors.
• Robust multi-directional information sharing which will enhance the ability to assess risks, make prudent security investments, and take protective action.
• Risk management framework establishing processes for combining consequence, vulnerability, and threat information to produce a comprehensive, systematic, and rational assessment of national or sector risk.

Please CLICK HERE to download the DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection 2008 Strategic Plan