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03.07

The New IEEE-USA Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee (CIPC)

By Luis Kun

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

In January 2002, Today’s Engineer published an editorial opinion titled: “Protecting Our Critical Infrastructure: A "Silo" Approach Won't Work” [www.todaysengineer.org/2002/Jan-Feb/op-ed.asp], written in response to a column carried earlier in the October – November 2001 issue, titled “Capitol Shavings: On Protecting Our Critical Infrastructure” [www.todaysengineer.org/2001/Oct-Nov/capitolshavings.asp].

The January 2002 opinion, written from a health care and public health infrastructure protection perspective, claimed that a “stove pipe” approach to the nation's critical infrastructure protection (CIP) would not work, given the large number of stakeholders. For example, threats to our infrastructure can be environmental, agricultural, chemical, biological, nuclear and/or radiological threats, to name a few. Therefore, all relevant non-Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies — EPA, CDC, USDA, DOE — need to be included when discussing CIP.

Where have we been in the recent past?

In early September 2005, Dr. Russell Lefevre, then IEEE-USA's vice president of Technical Policy Activities (TPA), asked me to chair an ad-hoc Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee and I accepted.

Some of the past accomplishments of the ad-hoc CIPC include an invitation-only, closed-door presentation to staffers (majority and minority) of the Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security Committee, a Sub-Committee of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (which has oversight on all IT / cybersecurity purchases of all federal agencies) on 29 September 2005. The briefing covered cybersecurity and the healthcare and public health infrastructures. In 2006, the ad-hoc CIPC delivered presentations at:

• The City University of New York during the IEEE's Society on Social Implications of Technology's (IEEE-SSIT) International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS 2006) in June 2006.

• The World Congress on Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering, in Seoul, Korea, in August 2006.

CIPC also co-sponsored a pair of meetings and made presentations:

• In Manhattan, N.Y., during the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology's annual conference, September 2006. A special session was chaired by myself and Frank Ferrante, a past chair of the IEEE-USA Medical Technology Policy Committee (MTPC), where MTPC was also a co-sponsor.
   

• In Alexandria, Va., during the International Institute for Critical Infrastructure's CRIS 2006, in September 2006. (The IEEE Power Society was the meeting's principal sponsor.)

I had an opportunity to represent the CIPC at a special session on "Integration and Interoperability of National Security Systems," in June 2006, during the IEEE Boston Chapter’s annual Homeland Security Conference. At this special session, three former White House advisors and members of the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection (PCCIP) — Dr. William Harris (Dept. of Transportation appointee), Mr. Brenton Green (Dept. of Defense appointee) and Dr. Jeffrey Hunker, former White House Senior National Security Council Director for CIP, and Founding Director for the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office (CIAO) — joined the organizer and chair, Prof. Robert Mathews, who provided scientific evaluations on CIP & National Strategies to the President, discussed various aspects of CIP and its relationship to interoperability. All of these experts have provided ongoing advice and/or review of a developing CIPC position statement on the subject matter of interoperability in the context of protecting nationally critical infrastructures.

For the Health and Public Health Critical Infrastructure, the MTPC's White Paper is worth reading. An aspect of functional interoperability and its relationship to CIP is evident in an editorial, “Interoperability: the cure for what ails us” (Government Affairs), that I wrote for the IEEE-EMBS (January/February 2007), which that can be found at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org

Where are we headed in 2007?

The IEEE-USA Board of Directors formally approved in their last meeting of 2006 the CIPC as an official IEEE-USA committee, effective 1 January 2007. At the request of Dr. Cliff Lau, the current vice president for IEEE-USA Technology Policy Activities, I will continue on as chair of this new committee.

In order to achieve the objectives formulated for this committee in its approved charter, I have discussed with numerous individuals the key areas that we should try to focus on during the remainder of 2007. These ideas were shared with individuals who expressed interest in participating in the CIPC's activities during our first teleconference on Friday 23 February.

Key Focus Areas

• Systems approach to problem solving

• Everything is connected (often consequences are unrealized and unmeasured)

• How society, in general, and almost all organizations remain disconnected because of the “stove pipe” syndrome.

• Computers, communications and IT, in general, touch every critical infrastructure. The Internet and automation, in particular, have become some of the most powerful tools for doing business and improving productivity, education, telecommuting and entertainment. At the same time, because of our increased dependency on these technologies, they can be one of the key vulnerabilities to our way of life.

Key Functions/Activities for 2007

• A new IEEE-USA Position Statement on Interoperability, produced through the ad-hoc CIPC, will be circulated for comments shortly.

• We will be reviewing immediately the current (2002) IEEE-USA Position Statement on Critical Infrastructure Protection and Information Technology.

• On 7 February, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put out for comments a modified revision of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) plan, which are due on 1 June. We have started its review.

• On 12 March, the DHS will be providing us with a copy of the National Response Plan (NRP), for which we also hope to prepare comments for the June deadline.

• On 16 May, CIPC will be co-sponsoring and presenting at a special meeting on Critical Infrastructure Protection during the IEEE Boston Homeland Security Annual Conference.

• On Saturday, 25 August, CIPC will be co-sponsoring a follow-up to the 2006 Special Symposia on Cybersecurity and Information Assurance during the IEEE-EMBS Conference in Lyon, France.

• A special IEEE magazine issue on CIP will be published either late this year or early 2008.

• Presentations to Congressional Staffers as needed.

For more information, visit the CIPC on the Web at: www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/cipc/

Luis G. Kun, Ph.D., is the founding chair of IEEE-USA's Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee; a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and of the IEEE. He is a Senior Research Professor of Homeland Security at the IRM College of the National Defense University where he developed and teaches the following related curricula: Homeland Security Information Management (HLS), Homeland Security Information Management: Tools & Techniques (HST) and Protection of Critical Infrastructures & Key Assets (CIP). He is a member of the Board of Directors of AIMBE and of the AAES. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.