Regional Security Assessments: A Strategic Approach to Securing Federal Facilities

摘要

The 18 critical infrastructure sectors identified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security form a vast and complex network of interdependent assets that supports the functioning of nearly every aspect of business, government, and commerce. The disruption of even one critical infrastructure sector by a terrorist attack or natural or manmade disaster is likely to have cascading effects on other sectors. As the Sector-Specific Agency for the Government Facilities Sector, the Federal Protective Service conducts recurring facility security assessments for approximately 9000 federal facilities. These federal facilities are interconnected in varying degrees of complexity and form a network of multi- or bi-directional connections between assets, within or between many types of systems, and within or across critical infrastructure sectors. This thesis presents a Policy Options Analysis of a cross-sector approach for protecting federal facilities across the United States. These options seek to expand the security assessments conducted by the Federal Protective Service to include interdependency analysis at the operational and strategic levels. These options may also serve as a model for other cross-sector security assessment methodologies that may be adopted by other critical infrastructure sectors.