DHS has spent $2 billion on private sector for critical infrastructure

About 85 percent of U.S. critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, so it is not surprising that since 2003, DHS has provided nearly $2 billion for risk-based grants to protect private-sector critical infrastructure and key resources. The figure was cited by Robert Stephan, assistant secretary of infrastructure protection during a a testimony before the Senate State, Local and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration Subcommittee a few days ago. The funding includes $445 million this year. The private sector is participating in protection efforts, but as the experience of several states has shown (in a recent report we highlighted the experience of Maryland in this respect), companies are reluctant freely to excahnge sensitive information with government agencies — and their competitors, said Ken Watson, manager of Cisco Systems’ Critical Infrastructure Assurance Group and vice chairman-elect of the Partnership for Critical Infrastructure Security. The partnership is working with DHS and the federal Information-Sharing Environment to resolve the concerns, partially by supporting a proposed new category of controlled unclassified information, he said.

Washington Technology’s Alice Lipowicz writes that one of the secure, restricted-access information-sharing environments supported by DHS is designed for bomb squads. The Technical Resource for Incident Prevention (TRIPwire) is an online network that gives law enforcement users information about current terrorist bombing tactics, techniques, and procedures, with documents, images and videos. TRIPwire has more than 1,800 users, including 566 certified bomb technicians, and has received nearly 4 million site hits in the past year.