The National Infrastructure Coordinating Center (NICC) is the information and coordination hub of a national network dedicated to protecting critical infrastructure essential to the nation's security, health and safety, and economic vitality.
The NICC is both an operational component of the National Protection and Programs Directorate— specifically the Office of Infrastructure Protection's Contingency Planning and Incident Management Division—and a watch operations element of the DHS National Operations Center.

The NICC maintains 24/7 situational awareness and crisis monitoring of critical infrastructure and shares threat information, in order to reduce risk, prevent damage, and enable rapid recovery of critical infrastructure assets from incidents caused by natural disasters, attacks, or other emergencies.

NICC functions include:

• Situational Awareness: Collects, maintains, and shares information about threats to infrastructure
• Information Sharing and Collaboration: Integrating and disseminating information throughout the critical infrastructure partnership network. More about information sharing.
• Assessment and Analysis: Evaluating infrastructure data for accuracy, importance, and implications.
• Decision Support: Providing recommendations to critical infrastructure partners and DHS leadership.
• Future Operations: Supporting decisionmaking for actions required 24–72 hours before and after an incident or event.

The NICC is committed to ensuring that the nation's critical infrastructure is prepared in case of a significant event, and well-informed and supported during and after the event.