California Asset Protection News

Critical Asset Identification Is Still Not Complete

In October 1998, a month before agencies’ initial CIP plans were due, CIAO issued its Vulnerability Assessment Framework. The framework was intended to provide detailed guidance to federal agencies on how to identify their critical infrastructures, identify interdependencies and vulnerabilities of those infrastructures, and provide the basis for developing remediation plans. However, CIAO officials concluded, on the basis of a review of agency CIP plans and subsequent discussions with agency officials, that agencies did not find the framework particularly helpful in carrying out agency planning efforts. Further, several agencies were unclear whether “critical” organizations, personnel, systems, and facilities to be identified using the framework referred only to those specific missions performed by the individual departments and agencies or more broadly to the performance of functions and missions by federal agencies on behalf of the nation.

On the basis of this review of the agencies’ initial plans, CIAO decided that the management of CIP programs required a new functional approach to defining and identifying critical assets and their dependencies, and it shifted the focus to identifying assets and dependencies that, under PDD 63, are deemed critical to the federal government’s carrying out its responsibilities for national security, maintaining the orderly functioning of the national economy, and ensuring the health and safety of Americans. To accomplish this goal and provide the agencies with additional guidance, in March 2000, CIAO began offering its Project Matrix methodology.

Project Matrix consisted of a three-step process in which each civilian federal agency identifies (1) its critical assets; (2) other federal government assets, systems, and networks upon which its critical assets depend to operate; and (3) all associated dependencies on private-sector owned and operated critical infrastructures.

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