US govt releases infrastructure security directive

The White House has released the long-awaited rewrite of a 1998 document that established critical-infrastructure protection, including cybersecurity, as a core policy of US government.

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Homeland Security Presidential Directive-7 replaces a directive signed by former president Bill Clinton, as the main document outlining the public/private partnership needed to eliminate major vulnerabilities to the nation's critical physical and cyberinfrastructures.

The document entitled "Critical Infrastructure Identification, Prioritisation and Protection", calls for a concerted public/private effort to identify and catalogue the nation's most critical infrastructure facilities and networks.

It will use geospatial imaging systems and requests detailed modelling and simulation studies to learn more about the potential effects of terrorist attacks against these infrastructures.

The latest document gives the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) another year to "outline national goals, objectives, milestones, and key initiatives", even though a cybersecurity plan released in February envisioned that such work would be done much sooner.

Senate governmental affairs committee chairman Susan Collins praised the administration for the directive.

"In the post-9/11 world, we cannot afford weak links in our critical infrastructure protection or gaps in our support for local first responders," she said.

But presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman critised Bush for allowing the DHS to take more time to put together yet another plan.

Dan Verton writes for Computerworld