National Infrastructure Protection Plan

Protecting the critical infrastructure and key resources CIKR of the United States is essential to the Nations security, public health and safety, economic vitality, and way of life. Attacks on CIKR could significantly disrupt the functioning of government and business alike and produce cascading effects far beyond the targeted sector and physical location of the incident. Direct terrorist attacks and natural, manmade, or technological hazards could produce catastrophic losses in terms of human casualties, property destruction, and economic effects, as well as profound damage to public morale and confidence. Attacks using components of the Nations CIKR as weapons of mass destruction could have even more devastating physical and psychological consequences. The overarching goal of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan NIPP is as follows Build a safer, more secure, and more resilient America by enhancing protection of the Nations CIKR to prevent, deter, neutralize, or mitigate the effects of deliberate efforts by terrorists to destroy, incapacitate, or exploit them and to strengthen national preparedness, timely response, and rapid recovery in the event of an attack, natural disaster, or other emergency. The NIPP provides the unifying structure for the integration of existing and future CIKR protection efforts into a single national program to achieve this goal. The NIPP framework will enable the prioritization of protection initiatives and investments across sectors to ensure that government and private sector resources are applied where they offer the most benefit for mitigating risk by lessening vulnerabilities, deterring threats, and minimizing the consequences of terrorist attacks and other manmade and natural disasters. The NIPP risk management framework recognizes and builds on existing protective programs and initiatives.