USFA Critical Infrastructure Protection Process Job Aid Available

Chief officers of firefighters and emergency medical personnel have the responsibility to decide which infrastructures must be protected from attacks by people, nature, or HazMat accidents. Scarce resources (i.e., money, personnel, time, and material) make these decisions somewhat complicated or difficult. How then, do leaders of emergency first responders determine the fewest indispensable infrastructures to receive the application of these scarce resources?

The USFA Critical Infrastructure Protection Information Center (CIPIC) advocates the implementation of the Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Process to secure the effective protection of the people, physical entities, and cyber systems that are genuinely mission critical.

The CIP process is an analytical model or template to guide the systematic protection of critical infrastructures. More basically, it is a reliable decision sequence that assists leaders in ultimately determining exactly what really needs protection as well as when.

As a time-efficient and resource-restrained practice, the CIP process ensures the protection of only those infrastructures upon which survivability, continuity of operations, and mission success depend. This process, which can make a favorable difference if periodically repeated, consists of the following steps:

• Identifying critical infrastructures essential for the accomplishment of operations;
• Determining the threat against each of the critical infrastructures;
• Analyzing the vulnerabilities of the threatened critical infrastructures;
• Assessing risk of the degradation or loss of threatened and vulnerable critical infrastructures; and
• Applying countermeasures to protect critical infrastructures where the risk of degradation or loss is unacceptable.

To assist leaders and managers of emergency first responders, the CIPIC developed a CIP Process Job Aid as a brief, user-friendly guide for the implementation of the CIP process or the development of a CIP program.
Effective June 10, 2002, the CIP Process Job Aid, a word document of fifteen pages, is now available at the USFA CIPIC Web site: www.usfa.fema.gov/cipc. Any questions about the Job Aid or the CIP process can be directed to the CIPIC at (301) 447-1325, or at usfacipc@fema.gov.