Ronald E. Fisher, Deputy Director, Infrastructure Assurance Center, Argonne National Laboratory and Michael Norman, Field Operations Branch Chief and Program Manager, DHS Protective Security Advisor (PSA) Program
Abstract
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is developing indices to better assist in the risk management of critical infrastructures. The first of these indices is the Protective Measures Index — a quantitative index that measures overall protection across component categories: physical security, security management, security force, information sharing, protective measures and dependencies. The Protective Measures Index, which can also be recalculated as the Vulnerability Index, is a way to compare differing protective measures (eg fence versus security training). The second of these indices is the Resilience Index, which assesses a site’s resilience and consists of three primary components: robustness, resourcefulness and recovery. The third index is the Criticality Index, which assesses the importance of a facility. The Criticality Index includes economic, human, governance and mass evacuation impacts. The Protective Measures Index, Resilience Index and Criticality Index are being developed as part of the Enhanced Critical Infrastructure Protection initiative that DHS protective security advisers implement across the nation at critical facilities. This paper describes two core themes: determination of the vulnerability, resilience and criticality of a facility and comparison of the indices at different facilities.
Keywords
critical infrastructure protection, vulnerability assessment, resilience assessment, criticality assessment
Ronald E. Fisher is the Deputy Director of Argonne National Laboratory’s Infrastructure Assurance Center. His responsibilities include providing technical support in many areas of critical infrastructure assurance to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), US Department of Energy and US Department of Defense. He currently serves as the Infrastructure Assurance Center coordinator for the DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection support activities, which include conducting field assessments, developing vulnerability assessment methodology, providing risk analysis and aligning DHS products with the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. Mr Fisher served as a senior consultant to the National Petroleum Council and to the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection. Mr Fisher is the author of more than 100 reports and has multiple copyrights/trade marks on software inventions.
Michael Norman has been the Field Operations Branch Chief and the Program Manager for the DHS Protective Security Advisor (PSA) Program since January 2008. Mr Norman is responsible for all of the programmatic planning, training, budgeting and operational support for 93 PSAs and supervisory PSAs deployed across 50 states and six territories. He is the DHS lead for the Office for Bombing Prevention and the Vulnerability Assessments Branch, responsible for the vulnerability assessments of the nation’s most critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) and the execution of the $50m per year Buffer Zone Protection grant programme. He is also responsible for developing plans to implement multiple CIKR national protection programmes, providing deployable teams and resources to assist with the protection and restoration efforts for the nation’s most critical CIKR. Mr Norman joined DHS in 2004 and started as the Program Manager in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Prior to joining DHS, he served on the Army Staff supporting personnel recovery operations for forces deployed from Joint Special Operations Command. In addition, he served as the Physical Security Officer for Kosovo with the US Department of State and as a marine for 13 years in both reconnaissance and force reconnaissance units.
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