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Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources

Protecting and ensuring the continuity of the critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) of the United States are essential to the nation's security, public health and safety, economic vitality, and way of life.

  • Critical Infrastructure are the assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, public health or safety, or any combination thereof.
  • Key Resources are publicly or privately controlled resources essential to the minimal operations of the economy and government.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7 (HSPD-7)  established U.S. policy for enhancing CIKR protection by establishing a framework for security partners to identify, prioritize, and protect the nation's CIKR from terrorist attacks. The directive identified 17 CIKR sectors and designated a Federal Sector-Specific Agency (SSA) to lead CIKR protection efforts in each.

Each of the 17 Sector-Specific Agencies developed a Sector-Specific Plan that details the application of the NIPP framework to the unique characteristics and risk landscape of their sector.

Sector-Specific Plans (SSPs) support the National Infrastructure Protection Plan by establishing a coordinated approach to national priorities, goals, and requirements for critical infrastructure and key resources protection.

The 17 Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources Sectors

stalk of wheat Agriculture and Food gold coins Banking and Finance chemical vat Chemical
commerical building Commercial Facilities communication tower Communications dam with water rushing Dams
plane with pilot Defense Industrial Base

 ambulance Emergency Services energy tower Energy
close up of government building Government Facilities close up of server room Information Technology close up of the face of the Statue of Liberty National Monuments and Icons
nuclear tower Nuclear Reactors, Materials and Waste postal worker moving package Postal and Shipping close up of petri dish Public Health and Healthcare
rows of cars in traffic Transportation Systems drop of water Water

Why is CIKR Protection Important?

  • Attacks on CIKR could significantly disrupt the functioning of government and business alike and produce cascading effects far beyond the targeted sector and physical location of the incident.
  • Direct terrorist attacks and natural, manmade, or technological hazards could produce catastrophic losses in terms of human casualties, property destruction, and economic effects, as well as profound damage to public morale and confidence.
  • Attacks using components of the nation's CIKR as weapons of mass destruction could have even more devastating physical and psychological consequences.

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 provides the primary authority for the overall homeland security mission. This act charged the Department of Homeland Security with primary responsibility for developing a comprehensive national plan to secure CIKR and recommend “the measures necessary to protect the key resources and critical infrastructure of the United States.” This comprehensive plan is the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), published by the Department in June 2006. The NIPP provides the unifying structure for integrating a wide range of efforts for the protection of CIKR into a single national program.

This page was last reviewed/modified on April 3, 2008.