Long overdue: DHS outlines efforts to protect infrastructure.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: SECURITY BEAT: Homeland Defense Briefs - Department of Homeland Security

"Almost five years after 9/11, and the Department of Homeland Security still hasn't ..." was a phrase often heard in Washington in the first half of 2006.

The department, however, did release its long-awaited National Infrastructure Protection Plan in June, which was just nine weeks before this symbolic deadline. The 196-page document came two and a half years after a presidential directive called for DHS to formulate a strategy to clearly define the responsibilities for federal, state, local governments and the private sector in protecting critical infrastructure and key resources.

Next step: more plans. Seventeen of them to be exact. Industries and government agencies will have only to the end of the calendar year to write more detailed plans on how to best protect their individual turfs.

James Caverly, director of the infrastructure partnership division in DHS, said at the Infragard conference in Washington, D.C., that the plans will detail ways the government and the private sector can work as "peers" to share and protect sensitive information.

The critical infrastructure and key resources have been broken down into 17 categories such as agriculture and food, defense industrial base, public health, banking and finance, national monuments and icons, transportation, energy and water. Different federal agencies will involved--the Treasury Department...