The U.S. CIP is a national program to ensure the security of vulnerable and interconnected infrastructures of the United States
The United States possesses both the world's strongest military and its largest national economy. Those two aspects of our power are mutually reinforcing and dependent. They are also increasingly reliant upon certain critical infrastructures and upon cyber-based information systems.
Critical infrastructures are those physical and cyber-based systems essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government. They include, but are not limited to, telecommunications, energy, banking and finance, transportation, water systems and emergency services, both governmental and private. Many of the nation's critical infrastructures have historically been physically and logically separate systems that had little interdependence. As a result of advances in information technology and the necessity of improved efficiency, however, these infrastructures have become increasingly automated and interlinked. These same advances have created new vulnerabilities to equipment failure, human error, weather and other natural causes, and physical and cyber attacks. Addressing these vulnerabilities will necessarily require flexible, evolutionary approaches that span both the public and private sectors, and protect both domestic and international security.
Because of our military strength, future enemies, whether nations, groups or individuals, may seek to harm us in non- traditional ways including attacks within the United States. Because our economy is increasingly reliant upon interdependent and cyber-supported infrastructures, non-traditional attacks on our infrastructure and information systems may be capable of significantly harming both our military power and our economy.

t has always been the policy of the United States to ensure the continuity and secu rity of the critical infrastructures that are essential to the minimum operations of our economy and government. This critical infrastructure includes essential government services, public health, law enforcement, emergency services, information and communications, banking and finance, energy, transportation, and water supply. Initially, critical infrastructure assurance was essentially a state and local concern. With the massive use of information technologies and their significant interdependencies it has become a national concern, with major implications for the defense of our homeland and the economic security of the United States. However, given all of the focus on critical infrastructure still one in three critical infrastructure operations goes without a business continuity or continuity of operations plan and three out of five of those operations with plans have never tested their plans as “fit for purpose.”[15] Critical Information Infrastructure is perceived as an essential part of national security in numerous countries today and has become the nucleus of the US terrorism and homeland security debate after 11 September 2001. A critical infrastructure is commonly understood to be an infrastructure or asset the incapacitation or destruction of which would have a debilitating impact on the national security and the economic and social welfare of a nation.